Introduction to Ecology: Tropic Air and Tropical Forests - Essay Example

On the other hand, when it descends, the air warms and dries. The heat from the sun is distributed unevenly across the surface of the earth with tropical and equatorial regions receiving more solar than the polar and mid-latitude regions.

Near the equator, the incoming sunlight tends to be vertically inclined to the ground causing greater heating than near the poles where the inclination is almost horizontal. Similarly, the Polar Regions emit heat radiation more than they gain whereas the tropics gain more than they emit. Near the equator, the heated air would expand and rise while near the poles, the cooled air would contract and sink. Without the transfer of heat from the tropical to the Polar Regions, the tropics get hotter while the poles get colder.

It is this latitudinal heat imbalance that causes the circulation of the atmosphere. The constant motion of the earth’s atmosphere would be explained by the observation of changing cloud patterns, winds, and weather. With wind patterns covering large earth surface sections, the result would be a global circulation shaped by the rotation of the earth and solar heating.

These two converge near the equator causing the rising of warm air. In the process of rising, the air cools forming clouds and eventually rain. According to Molles, this cycle, referred to as the Hadley cell creates temperate latitudes (2009). The cold air masses from Polar Regions interact with the warm air at the temperate latitudes creating boundaries called fronts. There is a large difference in temperature of the masses of air that prevail in the temperate latitudes.

Cyclones and alternate cold and warm air move toward the east from the west causing high precipitation. Low precipitation would be due to air temperature. The warmer tropic air carries more moisture and loses it on interaction with cold air, normally at mountains where cold air would be forced up and interacts with hot air on the mountainsides. 2. Tropical forests occur near the equator and savanna in subequatorial and equatorial regions. The tropical savanna, a grassland biome ranges from semiarid to semi-humid climate, with warm and wet seasons (Molles, 2009). 

In tropical dry forests, the temperatures would be quite high before the onset of rains. When the dry air masses originating from the sub-tropical high belt converge with moist air from the inter-tropical convergence zone, the warm moist air rises and then cools to precipitate as rainfall, resulting in the rainy season. Thereafter, the cold dense air descends with an increase in temperature and dries up. The tropical savanna has tall grass and occasional trees. In this biome, warm seasons would result in warm air which contains more moisture and its less density causes it to rise higher, expand, and consequently cool, forming clouds and falling as rain. During cooler months, the dense air descends and dries up hence no precipitation.