Climate and Oceanographic Conditions of Pacific Panama.
The climate of Panamá is largely affected by the position of a low atmospheric pressure zone known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) which also affects seasonal evolution of geostrophic currents in the Panamá Bight. During the rainy season (December through May), the ITCZ is located to the North of Panamá and produces light and variable winds and ocean circulation in the Panamá Bight is anticyclonic (west) which creates a southerly flowing coastal current. As a result of these punctuated seasonal movements of the ITCZ, Panamá experiences high seasonal rainfall often reaching more than 3000 mm/yr. Starting in October and continuing into the dry season (January to March) the ITCZ moves South of Panamá, producing a dominant period of northeasterly tradewinds known as the Panamá Jet, which results in a reversal of water circulation and becomes a cyclonic gyre with a coastal current flowing to the north. Upwelling develops in the Gulf of Panama during the dry season when northeast tradewinds from the Caribbean blow over to the Pacific through a physiographic gap in the central mountain range which divides the Isthmus. This wind stress creates seasonal Ekman spiral pumping and displaces nutrient-poor coastal surface water with cool, nutrient rich, water masses.
Read more about this topic: Liquid Jungle Lab (LJL) Panama
Famous quotes containing the words climate, conditions and/or pacific:
“Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us—that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the whole, it would seem they adapt themselves well, perhaps better than we do, to changing world conditions—they enlarge their domain, shift their hold on our nerves, and, dispossessed of one habitat, set up house in another. The universal battiness of our century looks like providing them with a propitious climate ...”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law?”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.... It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)