The zonal mean westerlies over the Southern Hemisphere.

A brief review and evaluation of various analyses of the Southern Hemisphere westerlies is presented, along with the presentation of some recent results. Several features characterize the westerlies of the Southern Hemisphere as quite different from those in the Northern Hemisphere and, in the past, these have typically been difficult to reproduce well in general circulation models. They are the double jet structure in winter, the stronger midlatitude tropospheric winds in summer than in winter, and the ensuing much smaller amplitude of the annual cycle which is associated with a maximum of global atmospheric angular momentum in January. New values for the hemispheric angular momentum integrals are larger than previously reported.