Maritime Continent is the name given primarily by

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists ...

s and

oceanographers Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its Physical oceanography, physics, Chemical oceanography, chemistry, Biological oceanography, biology, a ...

to the region of Southeast Eurafrasia which comprises, amongst other countries,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

and

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. In some usage the maritime continent includes the

Malay Peninsula The Malay Peninsula is located in Mainland Southeast Asia. The landmass runs approximately north–south, and at its terminus, it is the southernmost point of the Asian continental mainland. The area contains Peninsular Malaysia, Southern Tha ...

, but the peninsula is geographically much more aligned with Zomia.http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/about/tropics/maritime-continent.shtml Located between the Indian and

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

s, it is situated within a warm ocean region known as the Tropical Warm Pool. The maritime continent consists of many islands, peninsulas and shallow seas. The region is significant in meteorology because it is considered the most important energy source region in the entire global circulation system owing to a number of coincident factors, the most significant being geographic location and topography, both of which contribute to the development of the Tropical Warm Pool, which is the warmest large area of ocean on Earth. Coined by Colin Ramage in 1968, the name combines the terms '' maritime'' and ''

continent A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention (norm), convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be a single large landmass, a part of a very large landmass, as ...

'' normally used as opposites in the description of

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteoro ...

. Maritime air is humid, and continental air is dry. In the southeastern parts of Eurafrasia,

land mass A landmass, or land mass, is a large region or area of land that is in one piece and not noticeably broken up by oceans. The term is often used to refer to lands surrounded by an ocean or sea, such as a continent or a large island. In the fiel ...

es and bodies of water are, roughly speaking, evenly distributed. Moreover, the land masses are characterized by high mountains, and the seas are among the warmest on the Earth. This produces a widespread area of diurnal

thunderstorm A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustics, acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorm ...

s which pump huge quantities of moisture and heat high up into the atmosphere. These in turn feed the upper-level winds which circle the globe.

References

External links

The Maritime Continent and Its Role in the Global Climate: A GCM Study. Neale, Richard & Slingo, Julia, ''Journal of Climate'', vol. 16, Issue 5, pp.834-848
Atmospheric circulation Regional climate effects Oceanography {{climatology-stub