<P> The Pacific Ocean cell plays a particularly important role in Earth's weather . This entirely ocean - based cell comes about as the result of a marked difference in the surface temperatures of the western and eastern Pacific . Under ordinary circumstances, the western Pacific waters are warm, and the eastern waters are cool . The process begins when strong convective activity over equatorial East Asia and subsiding cool air off South America's west coast creates a wind pattern which pushes Pacific water westward and piles it up in the western Pacific . (Water levels in the western Pacific are about 60 cm higher than in the eastern Pacific .) </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section does not cite any sources . Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (November 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section does not cite any sources . Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (November 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The Pacific cell is of such importance that it has been named the Walker circulation after Sir Gilbert Walker, an early - 20th - century director of British observatories in India, who sought a means of predicting when the monsoon winds of India would fail . While he was never successful in doing so, his work led him to the discovery of a link between the periodic pressure variations in the Indian Ocean, and those between the eastern and western Pacific, which he termed the "Southern Oscillation". </P>

When was the idea of general atmospheric circulation proposed