Trade winds Fontaine Maury collected enough information to create wind and current charts for the world's oceans. As part of the Hadley cell, surface air flows toward the equator while the flow aloft is towards the poles. A low-pressure area of calm, light variable winds near the equator is known as the doldrums, near-equatorial trough, intertropical front, or the Intertropical Convergence Zone. When located within a monsoon region, this zone of low pressure and wind convergence is also known as the monsoon trough. Around 30° in both hemispheres, air begins to descend toward the surface in subtropical high-pressure belts known as subtropical
Tropical Atlantic Variability Tropical Atlantic Variability The Tropical Atlantic Variability (TAV) is influenced by internal interaction and external effects. TAV can be discussed in different time scales: seasonal (annual cycle) and interannual. Seasonal variability is the dominant time scale of TAV, which is due to the seasonal march of the sun. This seasonal variability is related to the movement of intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ),which is the convergent zone of trade winds from south and north near the equator. It has strong vertical convection resulting to a redundant participation band and weak winds. The mean location of the ITCZ over the Atlantic Ocean is