Bird Study

ISSN: 0006-3657 (Print) 1944-6705 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tbis20

Our Understanding of the Global Wind Circulation

and Climatic Variations

H. H. Lamb

To cite this article: H. H. Lamb (1975) Our Understanding of the Global Wind Circulation and
Climatic Variations, Bird Study, 22:3, 121-141, DOI: 10.1080/00063657509476457

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 121

Our Understanding of the Global Wind

Circulation and Climatic Variations
By H. H. Lamb
Climate is in a continual state of flux and, directly and indirectly, its
fluctuations affect the status of plants, insects, birds and mammals (not
excepting man). In this lecture Professor Lamb discusses the relationship
between recent climatic shifts and the global atmospheric circulation, and
raises the question of whether or not climatic forecasting is feasible.
MY AIM IN THIS LECTURE is to sketch briefly our present understanding of the
general wind circulation over the globe and its interrelationship with the patterns
of climate and climatic change. To do this, it is necessary to consider a little how
climate and the wind circulation are generated and how both are continually
subject to change. The changes and fluctuations are on all time scales, from the
momentary fluctuations of the wind—which we call gusts and lulls—to those
changes of regime which necessarily accompanied the slow drift of the continents
that have changed the face of the Earth over hundreds of millions of years. Over
those longest time scales there have doubtless been changes of climatic regime
called into being by changes in the Sun and in the composition of the Earth's
atmosphere and oceans as well. We shall not say more of these longest-of-all
changes, but it is only about 15,000 years since the last ice age was at its height,
and as recently as 10,500 years ago there were still ice caps in Britain. The
warmest post-glacial regime was already past its height 3,000 to 4,000 years ago,
and the glaciers and ice-sheets elsewhere in the world have fluctuated a good deal
since then. The patterns of bird migration which we observe must have been
developed since those times and are plainly subject to continual adaptation.
The climate of any place on the Earth is broadly determined by :
(I) the radiation conditions—the balance of gain and loss, of incoming solar and out-
going terrestrial radiation and the exchanges within the atmosphere,
(2) the heat and moisture transported (to and from) by the winds,
(3) the heat transported and the moisture made available by the ocean currents (which
are wind-driven),
(4) influences of the locality :
the nature of the surface, its albedo (i.e. its property of reflecting away some
part of the incident radiation), the specific heat, thermal conductivity and water
content of the soil, urbanisation (e.g. paved surfaces and artificial drainage),
the effects of buildings, trees and hills upon the winds, and the aspect or
direction of the slope with respect to the incoming solar beam.
Different surfaces differ greatly in these regards. New snow reflects away about
90% of the radiant energy falling on it, most other surfaces only 10% to 30%.
The specific heat of water is 1, that of most rocks only 0.2 to 0.3. Friction reduces
the speed of the wind over most land surfaces to on average about half its speed
over the sea and a third or less of that in the free air at a height of a few hundred
metres.
The flux of heat from the Earth's interior is generally insignificant, only about
0.1 g.cal./ cm 2 / day compared with a global average of 720 g.cal./cm 2 / day that
122 BIRD STUDY
 GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 123
would be supplied by the Sun to a surface normal to the solar beam in the
absence of any interference by the atmosphere.
The radiation available is, of course, graduated according to latitude and
season. And, owing to cyclic changes in the Earth's orbital conditions over tens
of thousands of years, small, but significant, changes take place in the budget over
those periods. The amount of radiation absorbed and, hence, the surface tempera-
tures developed, change very significantly with changes in the nature of the
surface—most of all when the surface becomes snow-covered.
It is the inequalities of heating of different parts of the Earth which set the
atmosphere in motion. Suppose for a moment that the air is everywhere at rest
on the Earth's surface. The atmospheric pressure would have to be everywhere
the same at sea level: for where a pressure gradient exists, there is a force to
move the air and cause a wind. The air must, however, become less dense, and
expand vertically, over the warmer regions than over the places where it is cold
and vertical columns of air contract. Hence, if we consider any particular height
above the Earth's surface, there will be more of the atmosphere above this height
over the warm regions of the Earth than over the cold regions. So a pressure
gradient will be bound to exist in the upper air, from high pressure over the
tropics to low pressure over the poles.
These pressure gradients are just the pattern we do find prevailing through a
great depth of the atmosphere from about 2,000-3,000 metres above sea level up
to 15-20 km. Pressure throughout this range of heights is generally high over
the tropics and low over the polar regions. It is also relatively low over the colder
regions in each latitude zone. This is illustrated by Figures 1(a) and 1(b), which
show the average height at which the pressure is 500 millibars (about half the
pressure of the atmosphere at sea level) over the northern and southern hemi-
spheres. We see that the prevailing pressure patterns at this sample height of
5-6 km. are very simple and consist of a single low pressure region in high
latitudes, surrounded by increasing pressures as far as the tropics. We also see
troughs of low pressure over cold regions like northeast Canada, and ridges over
the warmer waters of the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The gradients are
much stronger over the southern hemisphere (particularly over the great ocean in
middle latitudes) than over the northern hemisphere, as shown by the closer
spacing of the contours. This is because all the land in the highest southern
latitudes is still in an ice-age situation.
The differences of pressure represent a force which starts the air moving. But
a state of balance is soon approached between this force and others, such as
centrifugal effects and the deviating force of Earth rotation, which act upon the
air once it gets under way. The result is that the wind blows nearly along the
lines of equal pressure ('isobars')—or along the contours of a constant pressure
surface, as shown in Figures 1(a) and (b)—counter-clockwise around regions of
low pressure in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern hemi-
sphere. Its speed increases with the steepness of the gradient. Hence, as these
maps indicate, the main wind current aloft is a single great vortex of more or less
westerly winds blowing around the low pressure centre over the polar regions in
each hemisphere—the circumpolar vortex. This basic circulation is stronger in
winter, when the temperature contrasts between tropics and poles are greatest,
than it is in summer.

124 BIRD STUDY
 GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 125
This wind system which we find through a great depth of the atmosphere
between about 2 km. and 20 km. above the Earth's surface is, in fact, the main
flow which carries most of the momentum. As the upper winds circle the Earth,
they pass from regions of weak to regions of strong pressure gradients and vice
versa. Hence the air undergoes acceleration in one part of the map and has to
slow down in another. The temporary disequilibrium between the forces acting
upon the air in either case causes some departure from strict flow along the
pressure lines (contours or isobars). This is the origin of those shifts of mass
which create the anticyclones and cyclones, or depressions, of the surface weathet
map. These familiar features develop and decay in response to changes in the
upper wind pattern over them and are carried along with the general direction of
the massive flow of the mainstream of the upper winds.
High pressure at the surface is the dominant development along the warm flank
(equatorward side) of the strongest upper flow, and produces a belt of anticyclones
there. Low pressure is produced by the dynamical effects prevailing along the
cold (poleward) side of the main flow. The strongest upper flow at any given
moment is represented by great concentrations of high wind speeds, i.e. by 'jet
streams', in parts of the strong wind belt called 'frontal zones', where the
temperature contrast is particularly strong. Speeds of 50-75 m/ sec. (100-150 knots)
are fairly commonplace in the stronger jet streams at heights of 5-10 km. in
winter, and 100 m/sec. (200 knots) is sometimes exceeded at 10-12 km. An
opposite distribution of surface pressure developments, with high pressure on the
cold side and low pressure on the warm side of the mainstream of the upper
winds, tends to occur over limited sectors of each hemisphere near the confluences
to the strongest parts of the upper windstream and in some special configurations
of the flow, when and where greater than usual deviations of the flow extend the
polar regime towards lower latitudes.
The principal features of the prevailing distribution of surface barometric
pressure which results are seen in Figures 2(a) and 2(b). We may distinguish the
following:
(1) a sub-tropical belt of high pressure over either hemisphere, divided into separate
anticyclone cells over the oceans (and over central Asia in winter);
(2) sub-polar belts of low pressure, which are most marked over the oceans, though in
the northern hemisphere in summer the regions of lowest mean pressure are over
the land;
(3) in summer the continent of Asia is dominated by the monsoon low pressure centred
near 30°N. This is actually part—a displaced and invigorated part—of the equa-
torial low-pressure zone, which is also present in our winter, though farther south.
Over the oceans the equatorial low pressure zone is known as the Doldrums belt,
the winds being light except in thunder-squalls;
(4) regions of rather high average pressure near the poles and some extensions of them
over regions of cold surface, especially over parts of the northern continents in
winter. These extensions sometimes occur as separate anticyclones right in the sub-
polar zone of prevailing low pressure, where they are known as 'blocking anti-
cyclones', because they appear to block, or reverse for a time, the prevailing
westerly winds in middle latitudes. Their development is related to the confluent
parts of the pattern of jet streams aloft, in the manner mentioned, and to exten-
sions of the polar cold regime to lower than usual latitudes. On the western sides
of these blocking anticyclones (which are often stationary), however, warm air
streams far towards higher latitudes.
126 BIRD STUDY

An idealised scheme of the global arrangement of prevailing surface winds,

which the general pressure distribution produces, is shown in Figure 3. The prevail-
ing wind belts in each hemisphere—the polar easterlies, middle-latitudes westerlies
and the easterly Trade Winds in low latitudes, as well as the belt of equatorial
calms, or Doldrums, where the wind systems from the two hemispheres meet (the
Intertropical Convergence Zone)—move north and south with the seasonal changes
of the heat input; but this seasonal shift of the wind zones is much smaller than
the range of the zenith sun. It is also more complex, being distorted by the
geography of oceans, continents and great mountains. And it takes place in a series
of erratic movements, some of which greatly exceed the total seasonal range and
are followed by shifts in the reverse direction.
The detail of prevailing surface winds in January and July, as observed in the
first half of the present century, is seen in Figures 4(a) and 4(b). Figure 5 shows
the world distribution of surface ocean currents, which are largely wind-driven :

Figure 3. Prevailing wind zones and surface atmospheric pressure over an idealised
Earth (with no geographical complications).

GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 127

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Figure 4. Prevailing surface winds over the Earth : (a) January, (b) July. (Data 1900-50
approximately.)
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 GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 129
hence their pattern resembles that of the winds. They also vary with any persistent
variations of the prevailing surface winds. This map is included because the ocean
transports and sustains the food of seabirds.
Because the flight of birds is influenced by the weather and wind-flow of each
passing moment, it is necessary at this point to take note of the common structure
patterns, air motions and development of the individual travelling cyclones (or
depressions) and a typical anticyclone. These constitute the major eddies that con-
tinually occur within the general wind circulation, on which our attention in this
lecture is mainly fixed. Three stages in the development of a typical frontal cyclone
with its winds, clouds and weather are shown in Figure 6. Most cyclones in middle

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Figure 6. Three stages in the development of a frontal cyclone and vertical section
through typical cloud systems and frontal surfaces along the line AB. (Invert the maps
for the southern hemisphere.)
and higher latitudes are of this type. They develop from a wave-like disturbance
on the front, which marks the convergence of warm and cold wind-streams (the
so-called 'polar front') that have originated in widely different latitudes. The
disturbance travels more or less eastward along the front, steered in the
general direction of the massive flow of the upper winds (jet stream)—which more
or less accords with the direction of the low-level winds in the warm sector of the
depression—and tends ultimately to the cold side of the jet stream. The system
gains kinetic energy, as the frontal pattern evolves, in such a way that the colder,
denser air-masses spread underneath, and lift, the warmer airstream: a process
that lowers the centre of gravity of the system. Typical frontal cyclones attain a
diameter of 1,500-2,000, occasionally 3,000 km. at maximum development.
Figure 7 displays the characteristic relationships of a frontal cyclone (the full
lines are isobars, i.e. lines of equal surface pressure)—with a new wave disturbance
130 BIRD STUDY

beginning to develop—and an anticyclone to the pattern of the upper winds

(broken lines) and temperature distribution: the isotherms nearly parallel the flow-
lines of the upper winds. (For southern hemisphere situations both these last two
diagrams, Figures 6 and 7, should be inverted. The winds in that case blow clock-
wise round the low pressure area and anticlockwise round the high pressure area.)

Figure 7. Characteristic relationships of: (1) an eastward-moving cyclone, (ii) a nearly

stationary warm anticyclone, (iii) a small new wave on the cold front, and (iv) a newly
developing anticyclone (left edge of the map) to the thermal pattern, shown by the
broken lines (isopleths of thickness of the layer between the 1,000 and 500 millibar
pressure levels).

The anticyclone in these common cases is at the warm side of the jet stream. A
vertical section through the air motions and cloud distribution in a typical warm
anticyclone is displayed in Figure 8. The diameter of such a typical anticyclone is
commonly 3,000-4,000 km. along the long axis, and its breadth is of the order of
1,000-1,500 km.
Anticyclones over high latitudes and over the continents in winter are some-
times of this type, although very low temperatures develop in the surface air layer
through radiation cooling under clear skies. This is the vertical structure of typical
blocking anticyclones in either middle or high latitudes. But other high pressure
systems over high latitudes and over the continents in winter exist only in the
surface layers and the high pressure in them is entirely due to the density of the
very cold air there, while above them are various wind patterns which, if vigorous,
may cause the anticyclone to be rapidly displaced or decay.
 GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 131
The occasional tropical cyclones (typhoons, hurricanes) of low latitudes, which
develop more or less in the Trade Wind zone and sometimes produce tremendous
winds and seas, derive their energy from convection intensified by the latent heat
release accompanying phase-changes of the moisture content in the air over the
warmest seas (where the surface water temperature is over 27°C). They are also
associated with the intertropical convergence of airstreams from either hemisphere,
at times when this has advanced farther than usual from the geographical equator
into the hemisphere where it is summer. Although the energy developed is impres-
sive, and destructive, tropical cyclones are commonly only 300-500 km. in diameter
unless, and until, they move into higher latitudes and become involved with the
polar front. In the latitudes of their origin tropical cyclones generally drift west-
wards, but if they encounter an extended trough in the upper westerly wind-flow
of the circumpolar vortex, they then recurve and are steered with the upper
westerlies and ultimately to higher latitudes.
Let us now return to consider further the main global wind flow represented by
the deep current of the upper westerlies and the circumpolar vortex. The types of
variation to which this wind system is liable are as follows:
(1) Changes of strength.
(2) Changes of latitude of the mainstream of the flow.
(3) Changes of amplitude of the waves (i.e. changes of the latitude range of the
troughs and ridges) in the flow pattern and in the atmospheric pressure distribution
at the levels concerned.
(4) Changes of wave length (i.e. in the spacing from trough to trough or ridge to ridge
around the hemisphere).
(5) Eccentricity : the entire flow of the winds around the hemisphere may become
centred for a time somewhere away from the geographical pole.

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no cloud

.... SUBSIDENCE INVERSJO. N . .....

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Figure 8. Vertical cross-section through the atmosphere—with clouds, frontal surfaces

and subsidence inversion—passing over one place during the passage of a typical
anticyclone.
 132 BIRD STUDY

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VARIATION OF GLOBAL MEAN SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE

(5- year averages from 1880— 84 to 1965-69
after J.M. MITCHELL and N.C.A.R.)

Figure 9. Global surface air temperature : successive 5-year averages from 1870-74 to
1965-69, expressed as departures (°C) from the level in 1880-84.

The centre of the northern hemisphere circumpolar vortex quite commonly

takes up positions over the Canadian or Siberian Arctic. (And sometimes, in
association with large-amplitude waves extending far south through middle lati-
tudes, two or more separate centres appear at different points on the fringe of the
Arctic: this situation is commonest in cold winter situations and in the colder
epochs of world climate ) Over the southern hemisphere the vortex is most
commonly centred over the middle of the Antarctic ice region, near 80°S in the
Indian Ocean sector.
Many aspects of the normal seasonal change of the wind circulation are
explained by the changes in the position and strength of the heating gradients, as
the insolation declines and a snow and ice surface spreads over the higher latitudes
and continental interiors, while the temperature of the ocean surfaces in the
lower latitudes changes hardly at all. This process is parallelled by an intensifica-
tion of the wind circulation and a shift of the main circulation activity—
particularly the points or origin of the disturbances—towards lower latitudes.

1800
mb mb
40 40
N. ATLANTIC
Overall range of P m
30 30
Belt of Westerlies Jan

Figure 10. Pressure difference measured across the m'cldle latitudes belt of prevailing
westerly winds over the North Atlantic in January. 10-year averages, from 1800-09 to
1950-59, plotted at 5-year intervals.

GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 133

14(

12(

100

80

1860 1870 18:0 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 19/70

Figure 11. Number of days each year classified as of general westerly-wind type over
the British Isles from 1861 to 1974. Bold curve : 10-year averages plotted at 5-year
intervals.

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Figure 12. Rainfall (total downput of rain and snow) histories in selected parts of the
world. Successive decade values as percentages of the 1900-39 averages quoted.
134

rr 1

Figure 13. Map of average surface air temperatures over the Arctic in 1961-70,
expressed as departures (CC) from the level prevailing in 1951-60.
If we examine the changes of climate in the past, and even from decade to
decade in the present century, we find evidence of similar, though generally
smaller, changes of overall warmth, parallelled by changes in the prevailing
intensity and shifts of latitude of the main features of the wind circulation. Figure
9 shows the calculated changes of prevailing surface temperature, averaged over
 GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 135
the whole Earth, by 5-year periods from 1870-4 to 1965-9. Notice how similar to
this is the graph of average barometric pressure gradient over the North Atlantic
Ocean in winter (Figure 10) and the frequency of the (commonly vigorous)
prevailing west-wind situations over the British Isles (Figure 11). These changes of
vigour of the global wind circulation affect the amount of rain (or the total down-
put of rain and snow) penetrating far east to the heart of Europe and Asia, and
into the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as, obviously, the downput on the west-
facing hill and mountain slopes in Britain's wet western districts (Figure 12).
The secular (i.e. long-term) increases and decreases of temperature, and still
more of rainfall, are far from being uniform over the whole Earth. They each
have an interesting geography, which is of importance to many aspects of the
human economy and environment—to the possibilities of successfully growing
grain and fruit crops, to the natural vegetation and, of course, to the insect-life,
birds and other land fauna. Corresponding changes in the wind-driven ocean
currents bring about quick responses also in the ocean, its microfauna and flora
and in the distribution of the fish-stocks which feed on them.
The waxing strength of the global wind circulation in the early part of this
century had its greatest effect in warming those parts of the Arctic near the
Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea, which are penetrated by the warm North Atlantic

Figure 14. Ice extent (outlined by solid line) on the Arctic seas on 8 May, 1968,
compared with the 1911-56 average (broken line) for that time of year.
136 BIRD STUDY

Drift water, which in those years was impelled farther north and produced a great
recession of the Arctic sea ice.
Global mean surface air temperature rose just 0.1°C between the 1910-1919
decade and 1920-29, this being about one fifth of the total rise between the 1880s
and 1940s. The rise between those same two decades, 1910-19 and 1920-29, in
Iceland averaged 1.0°C; and in Spitsbergen and Franz Josefs Land, near the reced-
ing edge of the Arctic pack-ice, about 80°N, the rise was over 2.5°C. The tempera-
ture fall from the peak level of the 1940s to the decade centred on 1960 averaged
0.2 ° C for the whole Earth, 0.6°C in Iceland and 2.4°C in Franz Josefs Land.
The departure of the average temperatures in the period 1961-70 from the level
prevailing in the 1950s is shown in Figure 13. Up to that point the Canadian
Arctic had hardly begun to feel the cooling trend, and some areas there were even
warmer than before; but the rest of the Arctic was generally colder, and an area
centred over Franz Josefs Land was 5°C colder than in several preceding decades.
This area of Arctic cooling extended over northern Europe and Iceland, including
many of the breeding areas of northern birds. Figure 14 shows the recovery of the
Arctic sea ice to its most forward position for 50 years in May 1968.

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Egure 15. Northern hemisphere survey of the number of mild winters* between 1971
and 1974. Compiled by P. B. Wright, Climatic Research Unit, U.E.A., Norwich.
(*Winters with average temperature for the December, January and February period
above the 1931-60 average.)
 GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 137
There are lags in the responses of birds to the possibilities opened up to them
by a climatic warming. The early twentieth century warming of the Arctic was
accompanied by northward extensions of range. It may be significant that the
Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus extended its breeding range to Iceland quite
early, by 1911, because the responses of fish-stocks following the transport of
their food by the ocean currents seems to be, at least in some cases, almost
immediate. Swallows Hirundo rustica were not reported in Iceland till the 1930s.
And some species were still extending their range northward when the warmth was
long past its peak; the Lapwing Vanellus vanellus, for example, began breeding
in Iceland about 1960. By contrast, one must suppose that deteriorating climatic
conditions bring disasters to birds. The individual disasters are probably always
somewhat haphazard in their incidence, but the effect on the broad scale is
presumably to impose a quicker reaction to climatic cooling or increasing aridity
than to warming and to conditions which improve the availability of water and
vegetation.
The history of climatic change since 1970 is also an interesting one. To anyone
living in Europe, where there have been four or five notably mild winters in a
row, it is probably surprising to learn that the global cooling seems to have con-
tinued. The 5-year mean ocean surface temperature averaged for all the North
Atlantic weather ships fell by 0°-5°C from 1951-55 to 1968-72. The North
Pacific has also become colder, and Canada and the Canadian Arctic have
become colder than before. A northern hemisphere map (Figure 15) (produced
by my colleague P. B. Wright of the Climatic Research Unit) of the number of
mild winters in the years 1970-74 shows that, besides Europe, only the Gulf of
Mexico and southern U.S.A., and a narrow zone across eastern Siberia, have been
having mild winters in this decade, though over most of Europe their predomin-
ance has been remarkable.
The belated cooling of the northern part of North America has so increased
the winter temperature gradient between there and the tropical Atlantic Ocean
that the atmospheric circulation over the Atlantic has been greatly invigorated,
sending mild air far across Europe. The limited penetration of the Arctic
by this air, however, suggests that this climatic phase must be far less effective
than the regime that prevailed in the first half of this century in melting
the Arctic ice. Indeed, from 1961 to date, including 1974, most months of every
year have been colder than the previous (1931-60) average over most of the
Arctic. And, taking the year as a whole, no year since 1961 in England has had
a mean temperature exceeding the previous 30-year average, with one minor
exception in 1971 which exceeded the average by 0.1°C.
A careful survey of the global extent of snow and ice, measured by G. Kukla
of the Lamont Geological Observatory, New York, from satellite photography,
several times a month, produced the remarkable result that, on a yearly average,
the snow and ice cover had increased by 12% since 1967 up to 1972, most of the
increase taking place in 1971, the year when the climatic cooling rather suddenly
spread to Canada. In the northern hemisphere most of the increase was in the
transition seasons, spring and autumn, and was therefore equivalent to a lengthen-
ing of the winter. The increase appeared to be of similar magnitude in both
northern and southern hemispheres. From the beginning of 1973 to the spring of

138 BIRD STUDY

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Figure 16. Average atmospheric pressure 1970-72, by latitude zones from the North
Pole to 60°S, as departures from the average values for 1900-50 approx. (Thin line:
departures in 1951-66 from the previous averages.)

Figure. 17. Average yearly rainfall (downput of rain and snow) 1970-72, by latitude
zones from 80°N to 60°S, as percentages of the 1931-60 averages. (Thin line: percent-
ages measured in 1960-69.)

1974 in the northern hemisphere there was a reverse trend, which seems however
to have halted, and throughout the later months of 1974 the area of snow and ice
cover remained 10% to 11% greater than when the survey began in 1967.
Against this background, Europe's recent rêgime of prevalent mild winters seems
precarious, though it may continue until the southern United States, the Gulf of
Mexico and the Caribbean become cooler, or some other essential feature of the
recent heating and cooling pattern changes.
The colder Arctic in the last 15 years or so has been accompanied by an
intensified thermal contrast around the perimeter of the region of cooling. This
may be the reason for anomalies in the distribution of prevailing atmospheric
pressure and winds, which up to mid-1974 produced an anomalous frequency of
anticyclones in the zone between 40°N and 70°N—so-called blocking anticyclones,
which greatly reduced the frequency of the prevailing westerly winds in middle
latitudes and accounted for prolonged spells of drought, and of wetness and flood-
ing, in middle latitudes in different sectors at different times, particularly since
1968. It was this regime, notably interrupted in the Atlantic and Europe sectors
between July 1974 and January 1975, which was accompanied by climatic stress
 GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 139
of a severe kind also in low latitudes, while middle latitudes of the southern hemi-
sphere have experienced alternating spells of drought and wetness, warmth and
cold much like corresponding parts of the northern hemisphere.
Figure 16 shows how the overall average atmospheric pressure (at mean sea
level) in different latitudes in 1970-72 differed from the average values for the
first 40-50 years of the century. The main features are an increase of cyclonic
activity at the North Pole, and lowered atmospheric pressure also near the
equator, with higher pressure values (more frequent anticyclones) in the temperate
and sub-polar latitudes of both hemispheres. The thin line shows how far this
pattern had already developed in the years 1951-66. A corresponding survey of
changes since 1931-60 in the world distribution of rainfall (Figure 17)—actually
in the water-equivalent of the total downput of rain and snow—shows increased
downput in the Arctic and towards the fringe of the Arctic, as well as in the
higher southern latitudes, and greatly increased rainfall in a rather narrow zone
near the equator. This last feature seems to mark a change in the behaviour of
the equatorial rains, which have performed a more restricted seasonal migration
north and south of the equator than formerly. In consequence, a zone between
latitudes 10°N and 25°N has suffered from drought; and this aridity has entailed
a tendency for southward encroachment of the desert in Africa, as well as some
monsoon failures in India. Droughts in Rhodesia and the Transvaal, as well as in
Australia, seem to represent a similar phenomenon affecting the zone between
latitudes 15°S and 40°S. The thin line shows how far the same development was
already under way in the 1960s.
Figure 18 is a world map of the rainfall departures of 1970-72 compared with
1931-60. As is well known, 1973 repeated the disastrous features of this pattern
in tropical and sub-tropical latitudes, where extensive zones of drought (and of
wetness near the equator) are seen. The pattern in middle latitudes of both hemi-
spheres is an alternation of wet and dry areas, the latter corresponding to the
positions frequently affected by blocking anticyclones in those years. It is the
shifts that have taken place from time to time of these areas of wet and dry,
cyclonic and anticyclonic, influence to different longitudes in the middle latitudes
zone that have produced the long spells of one extreme or another in the 1970s.
It is not surprising that inquiries about the future trend of climate are more
and more frequently expressed. But the present state of knowledge is far from
readiness to meet this demand for climatic forecasts covering years ahead. Some
perspective is gained by examining the 114-year record of the frequency of
westerly weather situations over the British Isles (seen in Figure 11). This seems
to be a good index of the character of the global wind circulation. One sees how
a high frequency of westerly days prevailed throughout the period of Arctic warm-
ing in the first half of this century, which was also a time of relatively abundant
monsoon rainfall in the Sahel and Ethiopia, and of few monsoon failures in
India. The decline of the westerlies in our latitudes since 1950 is remarkable; and,
although year to year variations continue and 1974 turns out to have been the
most westerly year for some time, the height of such peaks is so far declining
in a way that parallels the decline of the 10-year means.
Extrapolation, however, is no safe guide to the future unless it be based on
recognition of the physical process, or processes, causing the trend. The farthest
it seems possible to go at present is to say that a continuation of the trend
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 GLOBAL WIND CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE 141

line with recurrence of the approximately 200-year cyclic fluctuation, which is

prominent in many long climatic series and proxy data, such as the year-layers in
the Greenland ice-sheet, and which is probably related to a solar fluctuation of
the same preferred period-length registered in the history of the radioactive carbon
isotope in the atmosphere over several thousand years past.
RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING
BLCTHGEN, J. 1966 Allgemeine Klimageographie.
Berlin (Walter de Gruyter: Lehrbuch der
allgemeinen Geographie, Band II). 2nd
edition. 720 pp.
FLOHN, H. 1969 Climate and weather.
London (Weidenfeld and Nicholson: World
University Library). 253 pp.
JOHNSON, C. G. and 1965 The biological significance of climatic
L. P. SMITH (editors) changes in Britain.
London (Inst. Biology and Academic Press).
222 pp.
LAMB, H. H. 1964 The English climate.
London (English Universities Press). 212 pp.
LAMB, H. H. 1966 The Changing Climate.
London (Methuen). 236 pp.
LAMB, H. H. 1972 Climate: present, past and future. Vol. 1:
Fundamentals and Climate Now.
London (Methuen). 613 pp.
MANLEY, G. 1952 Climate and the British scene.
London (Collins: New Naturalist series).
314 pp.

Professor H. H. Lamb, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia,

Norwich, Norfolk.