Why are fjords more common on west coasts?

Question

Norway, Alaska, Chile, New Zealand…. All west coasts

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

Fjords need three things:

trade winds (blowing inland from the ocean)

a coastal mountain range

a glacier

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This greatly limits the number of possible places that a fjord can form – and because the trade winds blow into the west coast near the poles (where the glaciers are) all the fjords will be on the west coast until such a time as you get glaciers in equatorial east coast mountain ranges (central america, the horn of africa, and indonesia) – which doesn’t seem likely unless we start a rather severe ice age (say, by nuking ourselves into oblivion)