Why is the Southern Sea so rough?

340 views

By southern sea, I mean all the sea between Antarctica and Africa/S America/Australia. The pacific ocean is equally vast but yet it’s milder. I was looking at global winds on a website and almost the entire Southern Sea perpetually faces 60+ kmph winds. There are even 3000+ km long stretches of continuous 80 kmph winds. Why?

In: 1893

16 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The Earth rotates and this causes weather to tend to move west to east. This includes the powerful jet streams but also weather systems such as storms. Of course there are other factors involved in the movement of the weather systems so some do move in other directions but most of them tend to move from west to east. In the Pacific Ocean this means that most weather systems will end up close to the Americas where the land will slow them down. However in the Southern Sea there is no land to hit. The same storm can circle the Earth multiple times building up speed and power over time. That can make these storms enormous.

You are viewing 1 out of 16 answers, click here to view all answers.