Latest Lists

Why do the vast majority of rivers flow toward the equator instead of away?

http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/riversno.htm This article lists the ones that flow away from the equator, however, it says that it behaves that way because the source is at a higher elevation. In that case, why is the higher elevation further away from the equator in most cases?

Public Comments

  1. it just happens to be a random quirk. Rivers flow down in elevation. The continents have been placed in a pattern that favors many rivers flowing in that direction
  2. Perhaps the lakes and rivers that flow toward the equator are also flowing away from the poles where huge glaciers made grooves and formed rivers when they melted. The glacier at NYC was at one time about a mile thick.
  3. Rivers do not flow toward the equator; they flow downhill, toward the ocean. It just so happens that most of Earth's land mass is currently in the northern hemisphere. It wasn't always that way, nor will it always be that way. That's just the way it happens to be now. Also, most of the equator is over ocean. So, if you randomly plop a river onto a land mass it may be statistically more likely that the downhill direction (which is what drives surface water flow) will just happen to be toward the equator. It's either just coincidence or biased sampling. There is no causative correlation between elevation and latitude.
  4. Wouldn't you?
  5. It is just the way it is. I can't explain it. It's just always been that way.
  6. That isn't true. Rivers flow in all directions and in fact the longest river in the World flows away from the Equator. 100's of rivers flow North, East & West.
Powered by Yahoo! Answers