High-pressure area
region where the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the planet is greater than its surrounding environment
A high-pressure air system, high, or anticyclone, is an area near the surface of a planet where the atmospheric pressure is greater than the pressure in the surrounding regions. Highs are middle-scale meteorological features that result from interplays between the relatively larger-scale dynamics of an entire planet's atmospheric circulation.
The strongest high-pressure areas result from masses of cold air which spread out from polar regions into cool neighboring regions. These highs weaken once they extend out over warmer bodies of water.
Weaker—but more frequently occurring—are high-pressure areas caused by atmospheric subsidence: Air becomes cool enough to precipitate out its water vapor, and large masses of cooler, drier air descend from above.
Within high-pressure areas, winds flow from where the pressure is highest, at the center of the area, towards the periphery where the pressure is lower. However, the direction is not straight from the center outwards, but curved due to the Coriolis effect from Earth's rotation. Viewed from above, the wind direction is bent in the direction opposite to the planet's rotation.
On English-language weather maps, high-pressure centers are identified by the letter H.
Wind circulation in the Northern and Southern hemispheres
The direction of wind flow around an atmospheric high-pressure area, as seen from above, depends on the hemisphere. High-pressure systems rotate clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
“High-pressure area” enters the record as region where the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the planet is greater than its surrounding environment. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what High-pressure, area and region can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1709543. The Library of Congress control number is sh85005660. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “High-pressure area” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.