Passat zone

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Passport zones, schematic
  • Northern Hemisphere Passat Zone
  • southern hemisphere Passat Zone

    • As Passat zone ( engl . Trade-wind zone ) also Passat climate zone , two belt-shaped zones between the equatorial and 30-35 ° N designated in both hemispheres of the earth (or S) in which Passate (large-scale ground- east wind ) blowing. The use of the term often refers to the climatic zones in these zones, but sometimes also the wind zones or just the regions there, in order to make a general spatial determination. If the trade winds are meant from an atmospheric point of view, the Hadley cells in the northern and southern hemispheres can be viewed as a spatial counterpart to the trade winds , as they represent the layer of the cells close to the ground. At the equator , the trade winds converge to form the intertropical convergence zone (ITC), which is the border between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere Passat zone. Strictly speaking, the passport zones are not ideally limited to 0 ° to 30 °. They migrate in a north-south direction over the course of the year, due to the seasonal shift in the ITC.

    From a climatic and landscape perspective, the trade winds lead into regions such as B. North Africa to drought (dry trade winds). Due to the large-scale, descending air masses in the subtropical high pressure belt, the polarward boundary of the Passat zone, the air descending there is warmed by compression ( Urpassat ), which leads to a high humidity capacity of the near-ground trade winds. Between the subtropics and the inner tropics , moisture is absorbed by the land. In the north of the Passat Zone, for example in North Africa, this leads to dry soils . In the direction of the equator, four further vegetation zones in the tropics are divided into deserts .

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ a b Forkel, Matthias (2012): Info sheet Passat climate zone in the online geography information center of Klett Verlag. Leipzig: Klett. (Accessed on March 12, 2013)
    2. ↑ readers, Hartmut ( 15 2011): Diercke dictionary geography . Braunschweig: westermann. ISBN 978-3-14-114445-1 . | Keyword: Passatzone, p. 667
    3. ↑ Forkel, Matthias (2008): The atmospheric circulation of the tropics and subtropics. The trade winds and monsoons. The Passat circulation (accessed on March 12, 2013)