<P> The scientific terms in English used to describe the weather systems generated by highs and lows were introduced in the mid-1800s, mostly by the British . The scientific theories which explain the general phenomena originated about two centuries earlier . </P> <P> The term Cyclone was coined by Henry Piddington of the British East India Company to describe the devastating storm of December 1789 in Coringa, India . A cyclone forms around a low - pressure area . Anticyclone, the term for the kind of weather around a high - pressure area, was coined in 1877 by Francis Galton to indicate an area whose winds revolved in the opposite direction of a cyclone . In British English, the opposite direction of clockwise is referred to as anticlockwise, making the label anticyclones a logical extension . </P> <P> A simple rule is that for high - pressure areas, where generally air flows from the center outward, the coriolis force given by the earth's rotation to the air circulation is in the opposite direction of earth's apparent rotation if viewed from above the hemisphere's pole . So, both the earth and winds around a low - pressure area rotate counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern . The opposite to these two cases occurs in the case of a high . These results derive from the Coriolis effect; that article explains in detail the physics, and provides an animation of a model to aid understanding . </P> <P> High - pressure systems form due to downward motion through the troposphere, the atmospheric layer where weather occurs . Preferred areas within a synoptic flow pattern in higher levels of the troposphere are beneath the western side of troughs . </P>

Air movement within a high pressure system generally sinks