Centers of action

Centers of action are extensive and almost stationary low or high pressure areas which control the movement of atmospheric disturbances over a large area. This does not mean that the position of the center is constant over a specific area but that the monthly atmospheric pressure corresponds to a high or a low pressure.

The French meteorologist Léon Teisserenc de Bort was the first in 1881 to apply this term to maxima and minima of pressure on daily charts. The main centers of action in the Northern Hemisphere are the Icelandic Low, the Aleutian Low, the Azores/Bermuda High, the Pacific High, the Siberian High (in winter), and the Asiatic Low (in summer). Sir Gilbert Walker used the same term to relate meteorological elements in a region to weather in the following season in other regions for the Southern Oscillation.