Did you know? The Southern Hemisphere is stormier

If you had to guess which hemisphere has more storms, which would you choose? If you said the Southern Hemisphere, you’d win. Here’s why.

For many years scientists have not known why there seem to be more storms in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere.

After all, there is more temperature contrast in the Northern Hemisphere due to the larger land area, but it turns out that that doesn’t matter too much.

Scientists at the University of Chicago found the first explanation that could explain why the Southern Hemisphere is stormier... and it is not because there is more water.

To test out their theories, they used climate models and ran experiments holding different situations still, flattening all mountain ranges across the world.

This only reduced the stormy differences between both hemispheres by half. Tall ranges reduce storm formation as it disrupts airflow. So, what about the other half?

Turns out it is the ocean’s circulation. Water moves all around the planet, sinking in the Arctic and it travels deep under the surface, rising at the South Pole in Antarctica.

This is a powerful conveyor belt that carries lots of energy with it, which provides the fuel for storms. Scientists tested out their hypothesis erasing this circulation and with it, the other half of the storminess vanished.

Even though there were also more storms noted in the Northern Hemisphere, on average this difference is in fact negligible due to the loss of sea ice and snow.