Intertropical Convergence Zone (Doldrums) Explained 🌧️

Referred to as the doldrums by sailors, learn about the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) Subscribe for weekly videos: https://goo.gl/COrUU6

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Near the equator, trade winds of the Northern and Southern hemispheres converge. In this region, strong sun and warm water heats the air, raising humidity and making the air more buoyant. This region where this occurs is called the Intertropical Convergence Zone and the Doldrums by sailors.

Referred to as the doldrums because of the relatively windless ocean surface, the ITCZ, or “itch”, circles the Earth, and appears as a band of clouds consisting of showers, with occasional thunderstorms. This band of clouds may extend for hundreds of miles and can be broken into smaller line segments.

These clouds and storms develop from the convergence of the trade winds aiding the buoyant air to rise. The rising air expands and cools, releasing the accumulated moisture in an almost perpetual series of thunderstorms. These storms can be short lived but can produce heavy rainfall. It’s estimated that 40% of all tropical rainfall rates exceed one inch per hour.

The ITCZ follows the sun, it moves north in the Northern Hemisphere summer and south in the Northern Hemisphere winter, which results in the wet and dry seasons of the tropics rather than the cold and warm seasons of higher latitudes.

The sun crosses the equator twice a year during the equinoxes, causing two wet seasons each year. During the winter and summer solstice, the tropics have their two dry seasons, when the sun is more north or south of the equator.

Further from the equator, the two wet seasons merge into one, and the climate becomes more monsoonal, with one wet season and one dry season. In the Northern Hemisphere, the wet season is from May to July, and in the Southern Hemisphere from November to February. Next week, we’ll explore Tropical Cyclones.
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