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What Types of Wind Affect the Rainforest?

Tropical rainforests are found in Earth's equatorial zone, where the sun strikes the planet's surface most directly. They have year-round warm temperatures and high rainfall, extremely dense vegetation and --- oddly enough --- poor soil. Because of the dense vegetation (some of it 200-feet high), there is very little wind inside a rainforest --- except in the topmost or emergent layer --- but winds from outside can affect it.

Trade Winds
- The trade winds blow in the same latitudes where tropical rainforests grow --- between the Tropics of Cancer (23.5 degrees north of the equator) and Capricorn (23.5 degrees south of the equator), where the temperature stays warm year-round. The trade winds blow steadily from north to south in the northern hemisphere and from south to north in the southern hemisphere, and when they meet at the equator they cancel each other out in an area of no wind at all called the doldrums. These winds bring moisture from the sea to the rainforest, where it falls as rain. They also carry desert dust to the rainforests, where it enriches the soil.
Monsoons
- Monsoons are strong winds that come from certain directions at different seasons. Some rainforests, such as those in Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines), have two monsoon seasons a year from opposite directions. If the wind patterns are disrupted and the monsoon rains do not come, the effect on the rainforest and agriculture in the area can be devastating.
Hurricanes, Typhoons and Cyclones
- All three of these names refer to the same weather phenomenon --- a violent storm containing high winds in a rotating pattern that moves across the tropical and semitropical oceans and, when it strikes land, can kill people and damage property. If a hurricane moves ashore into a rainforest, some coastal vegetation may be damaged, but the sheer bulk of the rainforest will actually disrupt and moderate the hurricane winds.
Thunderstorms
- Thunderstorms are local weather events caused by warm, moist air rising high enough in the atmosphere to cool the moisture into a cloud of ice crystals and water droplets. Ice crystals and water droplets carry opposing electrical charges, and when these charges build up enough in a cloud, they discharge as lightning, and the air waves from the discharge make the sound we call thunder. Rainforests can actually create thunderstorms when they release moisture from the leaves of the vegetation into the winds, disrupting the layers of atmosphere overhead and making them unstable. Severe thunderstorms can contain winds upward of 50 miles per hour, but damage to the rainforest is minimal and actually has a healthy effect on it, opening areas to sunlight and encouraging growth there.

Nature