Trade winds blow from east to west due to the Coriolis Effect

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

Differences in pressure and temperature between atmospheric gases create wind

Because Earth's surface is not uniformly heated by the sun at all times, pockets of warmer and cooler air will form and interact. Warmer pockets of less dense air will rise, leaving gaps for cooler, denser air to move in. Wind is this movement of air from high-pressure to low-pressure areas.

Wind is the movement of air caused by the sun's uneven heating of Earth

The tilt, curvature, and variations in Earth's surface composition across the globe cause different regions to receive different amounts of solar radiation. As the Earth spins and tries to achieve thermal equilibrium, air masses move and interact, creating wind.

Hurricanes spin due to differences in air and ground speed as they move across Earth

The movement of an object across latitudes causes it to take a curved trajectory because its speed no longer matches that of the ground beneath it. This phenomenon, called the Coriolis effect, explains why hurricanes spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

How jet streams, which reside in the troposphere, shape and confine pockets of atmospheric air

These fast-flowing ribbons of air are hundreds of kilometers wide and typically travel from west to east due to Earth's rotation, with the polar front and subtropical jets serving as major drivers of global circulation. Warmer air near the equator pushes the polar front jets toward the poles, which can buckle and deform them as they contain frigid polar vortex systems.

Surface ocean currents are primarily driven by wind, tides, and Earth's rotation, while deep-ocean currents are driven by differences in temperature and salt concentration.

An overview of Earth's atmospheric cells and how they distribute Earth's uneven heating

The Hadley, Ferrel, and Polar cells are circulation patterns that act like gears, moving warmer air from the equator to the poles. The rising and falling of air currents within these patterns creates semi-persistent regions of low and high pressure, which contribute to the formation of regional climates, such as tropical zones.

Lightning storms are more common in coastal and tropical regions

Water-abundant areas that receive increased solar radiation, such as those near the equator, experience increased rates of evaporation, which produce tall clouds as moisture rises, cools, and condenses. Mountain ranges can also steer air to higher altitudes, creating collisions between atmospheric particles that generate charge imbalances—the precursors to lightning.

Tropical cyclone formation require warm water and limited vertical wind shear

Ocean temperatures above 27 degrees Celsius fuel rising, moist air, which releases energy through heat as water vapor condenses into clouds. Significant changes in wind speed with height can spread out these upflows, preventing the eventual formation of a central column known as the eye.

How salt, sunlight, and wind drive ocean currents

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation plays a critical role in regulating earth's climate, but is threatened by climate change. Explore the effects of temperature, density, and salinity on ocean currents in this 13-minute PBS video.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

How jet streams and US weather are affected by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation

Jet streams are predominantly west-to-east air currents in the atmosphere that mark the boundary between cold polar air and warm tropical air, where cells of atmospheric circulation meet. By disrupting the location of these circulations on two- to seven-year cycles, ENSO alters the probability of droughts, floods, and above- or below-average temperatures across the US.

The risk of tornadoes and storm surges is greatest on the 'dirty side' of a hurricane

Winds in the right-front quadrant of the storm are amplified by the hurricane's motion and its rotation, which both move air in the same direction. Upon making landfall, these winds pull water from the Gulf and Atlantic onto land, creating storm surges. Tornadoes can also be generated from large differences in wind speed and direction at various heights.

Due to a local microclimate, a thunderstorm nicknamed Hector the Convector appears almost every day from September to March at around 3 pm off the northern coast of Australia.

Watch a visualization of global ocean currents from NASA's Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean project.

Monsoons are large, seasonal shifts in wind direction driven by differences in the heating of land and sea.

How El Niño and La Niña affect the Pacific and Atlantic hurricane seasons

During El Niño, trade winds push warm waters across the Pacific toward northwest South America, affecting atmospheric circulation. The resulting strengthening of vertical wind speed and direction in the Atlantic basin disrupts hurricane formation, while the weakening of this wind shear in the central and eastern Pacific basins increases hurricane likelihood. El Niña, conversely, has the opposite impacts.

Instabilities in the polar jet stream can bring cold Arctic air southward

The polar jet stream marks the boundary between mid-latitude air and the much colder polar air, which are normally contained by the polar vortex—a ring of strong winds that circles the Arctic around 16 to 50 kilometers (10 to 30 miles) above the Earth's surface. Climate change may be responsible for "blocking patterns" that distort the jet stream, allowing polar air to leak into lower latitudes.

Comparing La Niña and El Niño atmosphere-ocean feedback patterns

During La Niña, trade winds reinforce the flow of warm ocean water from the eastern to the western Pacific, allowing colder subsurface water in the eastern Pacific to rise to the surface. These changes reinforce overhead air movements by altering the air temperature near the ocean surface. During El Niño, these trade winds weaken or reverse, preventing upwelling by shifting warm water back to the eastern Pacific and displacing atmospheric circulation patterns.

All hurricanes have a central eye, where no extreme weather occurs, surrounded by intense winds and thunderstorms.

Why aren’t there hurricanes in Europe?

Despite their proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, the effects of the subtropical jet stream make tropical storms and hurricanes unlikely to reach Europe at full strength. Their remnants, however, can combine with other weather systems to create powerful storms.

Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones around the world

Tropical cyclones are named differently based on their region of origin due to historical traditions and cultural importance. These storms are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and northeast Pacific oceans, cyclones in the southwest Pacific and Indian oceans, and typhoons in the northwest Pacific Ocean.

The Arctic warms more quickly than the rest of the planet because of the loss of surface ice, a lack of vertical air circulation, and the release of thermal energy as water vapor condenses.

Dust from the Sahel and Saharan regions makes northwest Africa a hurricane nursery

NASA’s Convective Processes Experiment—Cabo Verde studied the early stages of hurricane formation, identifying how dust interacts with clouds over the ocean to produce the rainy disturbances that become tropical cyclones.

Atmospheric processes amplify the strength of storms by coalescing clouds

Research has shown that turbulent mixing of air at the edges of clouds and other small-scale thermal activity beneath them help clouds group together, intensifying short bursts of rainfall, especially in tropical regions. Simulations reveal this produces more powerful storms than predicted by older models, though they may occur less frequently.

Tropical cyclones consist of three main parts: the eye, the eyewall, and rainbands

The eye is a calm, clear central area surrounded by an eyewall of intense thunderstorms. Rainbands are spiral bands of clouds and thunderstorms extending from the eyewall.

Learn about various ocean-atmosphere cycles impacting global weather patterns

Although the El Niño-Southern Oscillation is among the most impactful, the North Atlantic Oscillation strongly influences weather patterns in the Northeast US by periodically changing atmospheric pressure over the Atlantic. The North Pacific Oscillation fluctuates atmospheric pressure and sea-surface temperatures that affect winter temperatures over much of the US.

Bomb cyclones can produce heavy rain, blizzard conditions, and intense winds

Known as "bombogenesis" in meteorology, these systems get their colloquial name from their rapid intensification over a 24-hour period—a phenomenon seen in some tropical cyclones. They occur most commonly along the coasts of the Northeast and Northwest US when there is a severe temperature difference between colliding air masses.

El Niño and La Niña are Pacific Ocean climate patterns that affect global weather

El Niño causes warm water to move east, disrupting ocean life and bringing wetter conditions to the southern US and drier ones to the North. La Niña strengthens the usual wind patterns, triggering cooler northern winters and more storms in the Pacific Northwest.

The top several meters of the world's oceans can hold as much thermal energy as the entire atmosphere.

Mapping how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation affects weather patterns around the world

In the warm episode (El Niño), summers in India, Indonesia, Australia, and the Caribbean are drier than normal, while winters bring wetter, cooler conditions to the US Gulf Coast and warmer conditions to the Pacific Northwest. During the cold episode (La Niña), these are reversed, with India, Indonesia, and the southern Caribbean experiencing greater rainfall in the summers.

How do hurricanes form?

Tropical cyclones, also called hurricanes and typhoons, cause catastrophic damage when they strike land. This four-minute video explores the life cycle of cyclones—how atmospheric conditions, ocean temperatures, and the Earth's rotation combine to create them, and how they are driven by winds and eventually weaken after moving over land.

Available data suggest that while hurricane frequency has not increased over the past century, average hurricane intensity has, a trend scientists attribute to rising air and ocean temperatures.

The Great Red Spot, Jupiter's largest storm, has existed for nearly 200 years

Despite decreasing in size, the anticyclone remains larger than Earth, rotating with winds up to 933 km/h. Its longevity may be because it is trapped between two opposite-flowing jet streams, which act like two conveyor belts.

Tornadoes, or twisters, have been seen on every continent but Antarctica

Because tornadoes require rising warm air to form, some meteorologists have suggested that urban environments—locations where human landscape modification has introduced materials that trap thermal energy—can enhance the conditions needed for tornado formation. Tornadoes have been reported to cause ear "popping" due to drastic changes in air pressure.

Most tornadoes occur during the afternoon and evening hours

While there is no official national tornado season as with Atlantic hurricanes, many tornadoes form in the presence of thunderstorms, which are fueled by solar heating and the energy released by the condensation of water vapor. The airflow instabilities created from this energy build throughout the day until the sun sets.

Stretching from Texas to the Dakotas, Tornado Alley is a US tornado hotspot

The region experiences atmospheric instability and extensive wind shear due to the convergence of warm, moist air from the Gulf with cooler, drier air from the Rockies. However, some recent data suggests tornadoes are more frequent and more powerful in the Dixie Valley, which includes much of the lower Mississippi Valley.

While the sun, moon, and stars rise and set from east to west due to Earth's rotation, the moon's eastward revolution around the Earth causes its shadow to move from west to east during a solar eclipse.

If the Earth stopped spinning, 85% of the world's population would experience supersonic winds

The planet's equator moves about 470 meters per second—over 1,000 miles per hour—and air there would continue moving at this speed for several minutes if the ground stopped rotating. These conditions would cause tsunamis, global storms, and fling debris fast enough to destroy nearly all human-made structures.

When testing climate models, computer simulations suggest that Middle-earth should be covered by forests—matching a description in 'The Lord of the Rings'—and that Westeros's long winters in 'Game of Thrones' may be linked to a wobbling planet.

Horsehead-shaped features seen on the sun and the clouds of Earth and Jupiter are examples of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, where a faster-moving fluid rolls atop a slower-moving fluid.

Watch a visualization of how Earth's oceans impact its atmosphere, weather, and climate.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of severe turbulence

Severe turbulence over the North Atlantic has increased by 55% over the past 40 years, driven by strengthened jet streams and storm systems. Ongoing increases in global temperatures, which fuel these changes, may triple severe turbulence incidents in the coming decades.

Tornado formation relies on wind shear to create a tube of rotating air

Once a horizontal vortex is created by air circulating between winds of different directions and speeds, an updraft, such as those seen in powerful thunderstorms, tilts the vortex vertically. The updraft then strengthens the vortex, which becomes a tornado upon touching the ground.

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is Earth's most powerful ocean current and carries more than 100 times the combined flow of all Earth's rivers.

How its uneven rotation produces the sun's 11-year cycle and flips its magnetic poles

While charged material rises and falls in the sun's convection zone, which induces magnetic fields, different latitudes rotate at different rates, making these fields increasingly turbulent. This builds to a critical point—the solar maximum—where magnetic field-driven events, such as solar flares, become more common before the field collapses and flips, restarting the cycle.

Reaching 2,400 kilometers per hour (1,500 miles per hour), Neptune's winds are the strongest in the solar system.

Nor'easters can produce thundersnow—lightning in blizzard conditions

Although thunderstorms typically require warm air to rise in updrafts and collide with heavier soft hail, which creates charge separation and eventual electrical discharge, these cyclones can replicate these conditions by churning the atmosphere through strong winds. Rarely, especially warm lakes can similarly help generate thunderstorms during the winter.

Juno has revealed Jupiter’s polar cyclones, complex atmosphere, and diffuse core

The continent-sized cyclones at Jupiter’s poles generate strong winds and ammonia-laden storms. The spacecraft has also collected data on Jupiter’s unique magnetic field, which resembles a blend of Earth’s and Uranus/Neptune's.

A breakdown of Earth's atmospheric layers, including why it can get colder or hotter with altitude

Gases in the troposphere—the atmosphere's lowest layer—cool with increasing height as they get farther from the thermal energy emitted by Earth's warm surface. In the next layer—the stratosphere—ozone is increasingly heated by the sun's ultraviolet radiation with height. Because cooler air sinks and hotter air rises, the cooler troposphere and hotter stratosphere form a natural boundary keeping Earth's weather in the lowest layer.