For centuries, sailors who had been all over the world knew where the most fearsome storms of all lay in wait: the Southern Hemisphere.
For centuries, sailors who had been all over the world knew where the most fearsome storms of all lay in wait: the Southern Hemisphere. “The waves ran mountain-high and threatened to overwhelm [the ship] at every roll,” wrote one passenger on an 1849 voyage rounding the tip of South America.
Many years later, scientists poring over satellite data could finally put numbers behind sailors’ intuition: The Southern Hemisphere is indeed stormier than the Northern, by about 24%, in fact. But no one knew why.
A new study led by University of Chicago climate scientist Tiffany Shaw lays out the first concrete explanation for this phenomenon. Shaw and her colleagues found two major culprits: ocean circulation and the large mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.
Read more at: University of Chicago
Topographical map of the world, with higher mountain ranges in dark brown and lower areas in green. The Northern Hemisphere has more land mass and higher mountains than the Southern Hemisphere, which contributes in part to fewer storms, according to a new study. (Photo Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
