Boundary current a basin (such as the Gulf Stream, a current on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean) are stronger than those on the eastern boundary (such as the California Current, on the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean). Western intensification was first explained by the American oceanographer Henry Stommel. In 1948, Henry Stommel published a paper in "Transactions, American Geophysical Union" titled "The Westward Intensification of Wind-Driven Ocean Currents", in which he used a simple, homogeneous, rectangular ocean model to examine the streamlines and surface height contours for an ocean at a non-rotating frame, an ocean characterized by a constant
Atlantic Ocean autumn. Due to a consistently strong wind shear and a weak Intertropical Convergence Zone, they are practically unknown in the South Atlantic. The break-up of Pangaea began in the Central Atlantic, between North America and Northwest Africa, where rift basins opened during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. This period also saw the first stages of the uplift of the Atlas Mountains. The exact timing is controversial with estimates ranging from 200 to 170 Ma. The opening of the Atlantic Ocean coincided with the initial break-up of the supercontinent Pangaea, both of which were initiated by the eruption of the