Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1991
Abstract
The characteristic patterns of climate and natural vegetation in central North America are strongly interrelated and result from an atmospheric circulation system that responds to both global and continental scale mechanisms. Climatic patterns arise in the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes or Mississippi River from the interactions between two major components of the global atmospheric circulation system, the tropical Hadley Cell and the extratropical, upper-level Westerlies. The Westerlies, particularly, are influenced and steered by thermal inequalities over the earth's surface as well as by terrain barriers such as the Rocky Mountain Cordillera. In addition, both the Hadley Cell and the Westerlies shift north and south on an annual cycle.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 11:2 (Spring 1991). Copyright © 1991 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.