Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Global Wind Belts
Sun-driven convection stacks three cells — Hadley, Ferrel & Polar — into each hemisphere, and Earth's spin twists the surface flow into the named wind belts. Slide your cursor down the map to read the wind at any latitude, then change the planet's spin and how hard the sun heats it.
Labs / Geography / Global Wind Belts
Global Wind Belts
Sun-driven convection stacks three cells — Hadley, Ferrel & Polar — into each hemisphere, and Earth's spin twists the surface flow into the named wind belts. Slide your cursor down the map to read the wind at any latitude, then change the planet's spin and how hard the sun heats it.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
Lat 20°NBelt Trade WindsWind from NEDeflection 0°
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Drag the spin down to zero. Where do the curving trade winds and westerlies go, and why do they collapse into straight north–south flow?
- Park your cursor at 15°N, then at 45°N. Why does one belt blow "from the NE" while the other blows "from the SW"?
- Watch the deflection readout as you move from the equator to the pole. Where is the Coriolis bending strongest, and where does it vanish?
- Turn the heating down with "Weak sun." What happens to the wind speeds and to the parcels drifting near the doldrums?
- Why are the calm belts — the doldrums at 0° and the horse latitudes near 30° — exactly where two neighbouring cells meet?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.