This is an archive of past discussions about Wind. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
What is the difference between the versions of September 1 and August 6? RickK 02:35, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I appreciate the effort made by the writer of the original page, but there were many problems with it. I have reorganized it to follow current terms and practices in meteorology/climatology, and have extended it considerably. Denni 19:05, Jan 18 2004 (UTC)
(William M. Connolley 16:35, 2004 Mar 10 (UTC)) I've made a load of minor hacks (and rewritten the intro). I completely removed:
In certain circumstances, the Coriolis force acting on moving air may be almost or entirely overwhelmed by the centripetal force. One such circumstance is at the equator, where, for all practical purposes, the Coriolis force is nonexistent. Such a wind is said to be cyclostrophic, and is characterized by rapid rotation over a relatively small area. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons are examples of this type of wind.
because its badly flawed. There are no hurricanes on the equator. The orographic wind bit is dodgy. I didn't believe the origin of the phrase "trade wind".
While I cannot lay any right to this article, I nonetheless take some pride in it.
(William M. Connolley 22:39, Mar 11 2004 (UTC)) Thats what I thought, so I've done my best to inform you rather than slip the changes in...
Many of the changes you made were good ones, especially in those cases, such as the intro, where you added to existing material. However, I am a little concerned that material has simply been deleted without correction or modification - paragraphs on the cyclostrophic and geostrophic winds (while you quite correctly say that hurricanes do not form on the equator, they have been known to drift across it).
(William M. Connolley 22:39, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)) I'm fairly sure that hurricanes (or as wikipedia calls them, trop cyclones) depend crucially on coriolis to form and maintain. I did check on some hurricane track pages to confirm this... I can't find the page I used now. But look at http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at2003.asp or 2002 or 2001. No tracks within 10 deg of the equator. If hurricanes do occaisionally cross the equator, I think this is the exception not norm.
I would also expect that you would agree that disbelief is not a vaid reason on its own to change a point. "The wind blows trade," is legit - "trade" is an Old English word for path or track, which makes sense, because that is exactly how trade was (and still is) carried out.
I was unsure of that. I see you've restored it - fair enough. To me, "trade wind" means the wind used for trading ships, and needs no further explanation. But OK.
What is it you find "dodgy" about orographic wind? As I have indicated, it is not a formally-employed meteorological term. It nonetheless describes a real meteorological event, and I can vouch for that, living, as I do, less than 30 km from the east slope of the Canadian Rockies.
(William M. Connolley 22:39, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)) I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember exactly why. Apologies for needless irritation. Trying to reconstruct, I think my feeling was that an orogrpahic wind often meant a wind affected by local orography - in the sense of being turned perhaps rather than lifted. And it does seem to be a recognised term: see e.g. http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/browse?s=o&p=15
The Internet is our friend. Doing an advanced search on trade or on geostrophic/cyclostrophic wind will show you that if my facts are incorrect, so are those of meteorology professors. Denni 19:10, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)
Re cyclostrophic... I felt your para was implying that these winds happened *particularly* over the equator. I plead that others might be similarly mislead. I've restored the para, with the equator bit removed.
I appreciate your reply, William. I'm not interested in any turf war here; this is, after all, a place of collaborative effort. We serve each other best by keeping each other honest. I'd like to keep a dialog going - I'm the first to admit that my knowledge is not complete and so I'm always open to other views. I also hate getting called out (as you might have noted), and therefore make every effort to ensure my facts are correct. Those I am not absolutely certain of, I research until I'm satisfied with their integrity. Still, things slip by; see further on the Talk:Atmospheric circulation page. Denni 18:04, Mar 12 2004 (UTC)
To much explanatory dynamics
(William M. Connolley 13:21, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)) I reverted CT's changes. Sorry. The reason was that it seemed to be introducing too much explanatory dynamics into a general purpose article. I have cut out the para he didn't like though.
In general there seems to be a confusion here between the actual winds in the world and the various mathematical approximations to the equations. The math approx is dealt with lower down (in Winds that are defined by an equilibrium of physical forces) and that seems to make sense. I don't think the section about "synoptic winds" should be doing this again, but worse... it should be about actual winds.
I also didn't like The primary motion of air is to move from higher to lower pressure. Since there is nothing to stop the air from curving to the right it curves to the right as it moves. This seems too much like the handy-wavy version of the dynamics... it starts to do this, then it does that. Atmos flow is almost always near-balanced. The geostrophic wind page seems better.
OK, to much in-depth in a general purpose article. When I wrote, 'the primary motion is' I did not mean to imply a sequential ordering, a sequence in time. My intention was to emphasize a direction of energy flow through the system. The pressure gradient as the supplier of the energy of wind, (and friction dissipating energy). Of course, low pressure areas form gradually, so the wind patterns change gradually. Language is sequential, it's pretty hard to convey the interconnectedness of the dynamics of wind. If only I could use infinitisimals in everyday language... --Cleon Teunissen | Talk 14:24, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
(William M. Connolley 13:29, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)) As I understand it (Holton, An Intro to Dynamic Meteorology) geostrophic approx is pressure-coriolis balance. This can only occur in the real world if the height contours are latitude circles. Gradient approx is flow parallel to the height contours, a balance between coriolis, centrifugal force and pressure gradient. It is usually a better approx to the actual wind than the geostrophic approx. (William M. Connolley 13:29, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC))
Yes, in the gradient wind approx there are three forces in the equations. At first, I didn't quite see the implications of that.
Gradient wind approx covers both the situations where coriolis effect and centrifugal force act in the same direction, and situations where they act in opposite directions. Of course, coriolis effect and centrifugal effect cannot actually oppose each other since both are manifestation of inertia. If they oppose each other in the calculation, then in the atmosphere there will be either centrifugal force or coriolis force, depending on the direction of the pressure gradient force. more likely depending on magnitude of pressure gradient force and velocity of the wind. --Cleon Teunissen | Talk 20:02, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
A special case of gradient wind is inertial wind. In inertial wind there is no force involved. External link: Inertial flow - Balanced flow tutorial by Ryan Turkington On that webpage the period of inertial wind is given: 12 divided by the sine of the angle of the latitude gives the number of hours of the period of rotation. Close to the poles the period is nearly 12 hours. --Cleon Teunissen | Talk 15:33, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Coriolis effect
The article says
In certain circumstances, the Coriolis force acting on moving air may be almost or entirely overwhelmed by the centripetal force. Such a wind is said to be cyclostrophic, and is characterized by rapid rotation over a relatively small area. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons are examples of this type of wind.
The Coriolis force is not "overwhelmed"! The Coriolis effect can only cause at most one revolution per day. Other things are happening by the time there is rapid rotation. Paul Beardsell23:58, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Great page but no mention of wind as an energy/power source . . .
I just have a 1 question. Has there ever been a case where wind moved in a vertical fashion? even for a little while? You know, how wind moves circular like the Earth spinning? Angelofdeath27519:03, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Microbursts would be wind moving in a verical fashion. But I am not sure this is what you are looking for.
Convective updrafts are another - but it's not wind except where it has a horizontal speed which can be measured. Crimsone07:47, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
My word! Picked up as unsigned by a bot before I had chance to notice and sign it! A bit too quick off the mark there I suspect!Crimsone07:47, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Wind direction is reported by the direction from which it originates.
Perhaps this statement should occur in the article at some point prior to the first mention of Westerly or Easterly.
I just looked up in the dictionary that westerly and co. have the general meaning of "from the west" and such. There is a linguistic convention that westerly means "from the west", and possibly also a weather convention that any phrase combining a direction with a wind refers to the origin of the wind, rather than its direction of flow. Would "west wind" ordinarily be taken as a sloppy version of "westerly wind"? Does one have to explicitly say "west blowing wind" to refer to its direction of force? If you are standing in the middle of tornado wreckage and you ask someone who was bunkered down "which way was it blowing when my deck chair took flight?" and the person responds "westerly", do you then hunt to the east? I suppose the person could say "westward" in this instance.
Unless they visit answers.com, which lists westerly as a synonym to westward.
Actually, the tornado is an interesting case. I see many references in google that Tornados are refered to by point of origin, which won't necessarily correspond to the wind conditions experienced along its path. I think the term "westerly" describes not the wind itself, but the weather system that brought the wind.
Tornado paths propagate from a primarily southwesterly direction during January, February, and March, then from a predominantly westerly direction ...
I also found "westerly" attached directly to "flow" (my em.):
The Mechanicville event also bore some similarity to the westerly flow tornado cases defined in the Johns and Dorr (1996) study of strong and violent ...
Fortunately, from my study of electronics I know that electrons flow negly, while holes flow posly, so I can accept this construct either way.
Final thought: there are a couple of other cases where words have become so thoroughly confused in the public mind that you can barely distinguish antonyms from synonyms: flammable/inflammable/imflammable, comprised of/comprises/composes.
To all tha pay attention this kind of stuff, I realize that before I reverted this last edit (clearly vandalism) I had used up my 3R for the day. But it was such a blatent act I couldn't stand it. --Amaraiel14:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Gustiness
Expert needed
This comment is copied from Talk:Gust (wind) (without merging history) before converting that talk page to a Rdr to this talk page, but after the corresponding articles were merged. --Jerzy•t01:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
The title was fine, but it is far from clear that there is any reason for it to be a page, rather than a section on the accompanying article. Unless and until it builds up to multiple sections, there will be no rush needed for breaking it out as a page. --Jerzy•t01:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I had some thot that the initial contribution is a DictDef and a candidate for deletion. But the more i think abt it, the more i think that there is not just a phenomenon with a name, but a subtle one with a non-trivial explanation. My first meteorology-ignorant thoughts were chaotic behavior, non-linear systems, and unstable equilibrium. But then i started thinking about anisotropic three-dimensional systems (heh, heh, i mean, vertical is fundamentally different from horizontal), and more specifically microburstwind shear. Please, meteorologists, stop me before i theorize again! --Jerzy•t04:58, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Merge with "Gust (wind)" and resulting anomolous history for Jan 2008 and/thru Apr 2008
WP provides for merging the attribution histories of articles whose content is merged, but not for automatically making obvious when every passage was part of the content of WP. In this case, the entries
17:17, 3 February 2008 Cenarium (431 bytes) (expert needed)
and
02:30, 27 January 2008 Cenarium (400 bytes) (stubify)
02:00, 27 January 2008 Cenarium m (moved Gusts to Gust (wind))
00:05, 27 January 2008 Aodhdubh m (354 bytes) (Chinook wind)
and
23:55, 26 January 2008 Aodhdubh (345 bytes) (Initial article. Gust Corporation's need for redirect prevents using Gust page.)
(listed consecutively within the middle group of those three) could give the impression that the content shown in those revisions disappeared from WP for much the time periods between those groups of entries, only to reappear in the last few days. Those revisions were made to Gust (wind) (and retained there, until April, without interruption) rather than Wind, but have just been merged into Wind's edit history. --Jerzy•t06:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I'll give you guys until mid-May before downgrading this article to Start. It needs inline sources, and has been tagged for over a week now. Thegreatdr10:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm rather new to Wikipedia, and am not well versed with all the editing "tricks" out there. When I brought up this article, the first line defined wind as "...horizontal movment of air caused by Howard Stern's asshole..." However, when I went to edit the page to correct that line, the vandalism doesn't appear in the editing window. Hope someone smarter than me knows how to correct this. -Dave — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pinkadelica (talk • contribs) 06:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Triple undo because of vandalizm! 84.204.40.218 (talk) 14:29, 30 January 2009 (UTC)Anonymous
I'de rather see some more indepth information. I feel there was not enough exaples with the explaination.
It would be rather good to know more like the average electricity produce. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.130.155.214 (talk) 06:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Added a little more information per your request. For any more, the user of the page will have to click on the wind power wikilink. Thegreatdr (talk) 15:24, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Solar wind
I think solar wind needs to somehow be included within the definition of wind. This is somewhat tricky. I attempted to define it more generally so this type of wind would be included (see a previous revision), but this definition was eroneous, since it includes things would not be considered to be wind.
The introductory section needs a serious tidy up there is lots of repetition here, presumeably by different people.
I intend to work on this myself, but encourage others to also.
This article misses completely a specific type of wind, the quartering winds. They are winds that come at a diagonal. These winds were important in the structure of the Centre Point Tower Sydney, Australia Thegreatdr (talk) 17:15, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
Expansion and wikification
We're down to three sections which need inline references, and the article is nearly triple the size it was on March 12. Once the inline references are added, and the references are all in a similar format, I think we could send the article through GAN. Thegreatdr (talk) 20:54, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
After reaching GA, a section was added concerning planetary wind, which is similar to the solar wind in that it is an outgasing from a celestial object. Thegreatdr (talk) 14:02, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
So, if it's high from low, that means that wind is coming from places (or environments) that are hotter to the ones that are colder? Or is it vice-versa?
If I'm heating a surface on Earth, would wind come from that surface or to that surface?
Also, what about the strange sound of the wind? I'm guessing it's air molecules hitting each other. But is that so? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.219.64.35 (talk) 12:16, 7 April 2007 (UTC).
Air is denser when it's cold, meaning there is more pressure. But that doesn't mean that high pressure areas are always colder than low pressure areas. Both high and low pressure areas have air flow associated with them, I imagine the way this works will be outlined for you in the article on cyclones
If the Earth's surface is heated, it will heat the air above it and that air will become less dense. Air from higher pressure areas will move to the lower pressure area.
The sound isn't molecules colliding and hitting each other. When changes in air pressure cause vibration of your ear drum you experience sound. Like when a drum vibrates. Its the same kind of thing, because the air pressure isn't uniform in the moving air you can experience it or the vibrations in the air things make when they themselves are hit by the wind —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.126.9.163 (talk) 15:57, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
Alize Winds? - Can somebody who knows this weather stuff add some info about Alize winds to this article? I recently went searching for details on what the Alize winds were and found very little information out there. 18:48, 4 August 2005 User:65.182.230.24 (Talk) (Alize Winds?)
To clarify your questions, the Divine Wind or Kamikaze was a series of typhoons that destroyed the Mongol invasions of Japan in the 1200's. Therefore, they are tropical cyclones and not a type of winds. --Anhamirak17:16, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Problems with the lead
With all due respect to the editors of this article, the lead is just terrible. It has very poor flow and continuity, the paragraphs (for the most part) don't have coherent topics, and it is nearly unreadable. It's as if someone reduced each paragraph of the article into a sentence, sorted them randomly, and then divided them arbitrarily into paragraphs. While that may technically meet the definition of a lead section, it makes for awful reading. The last paragraph especially seems to just be a random list of facts. What are the topics of the lead paragraphs? I would suggest:
Description and causes of wind
Measurement and climatology
Effects of wind on human civilization
Effects of wind on the natural world
If someone could rewrite the lead with this in mind, I think it would go a long way to making it more coherent and enjoyable to read. The rest of the article is excellent. Congratulations on the FA promotion! Kaldari (talk) 21:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. Readability issues came up in the GAN review, but not as much in the FAC. FAC was mostly about referencing and topics which weren't previously covered. I'll rework it over the next few days. There is still one other ongoing review out there I have yet to hear feedback from, so even though the FAC is closed, I expect to hear about other possible problems shortly. Thegreatdr (talk) 09:50, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
In the definition it should be stated that
On Earth and within other planetary atmospheres, wind consists of air molecules in motion moving from a hot environment to a colder environment.
This paragraph then needs to be put right after the lines before:
The two major driving factors of large scale atmospheric circulation are the differential heating between the equator and the poles, which causes the jet stream and the associated climatological mid-latitude westerlies, polar easterlies, and the trade winds, and the rotation of the planet (Coriolis effect), which causes the circular motion of air around areas of high and low pressure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.176.217.217 (talk) 15:40, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
The picture is done, I received your message too late Thegreatdr, perhaps someone else may thus make a correct new version of my image (with proper coloring). The image is: . Remake and implement —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.243.186.222 (talk) 06:44, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Since this is a recently featured article (June 2009), what does that say about the badness of non-featured articles? -Atmoz (talk) 23:37, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Hmmm. The referenced lead in the Uranus article contradicts your statement Skinwalker and the referenced statement within this article. In any event, point out the errors and structural problems, and they will be addressed. If you look at the FAC history, you'll see that the main issue pointed out was reference structure, even though GAN hinted there could be other problems, few pointed out prose issues in FAC other than missing elements. I am the main editor of this article, and sent this through the GAN and FAC processes. A couple people were going to do a thorough review this article around the time FAC closed, and because it closed, never got around to it. I've heard from others since then that the FAC process is seriously flawed, and seems centered on referencing issues rather than actual copyediting. After reviewing Brigade's edits, the first one was a minor chicken and egg point (since density differences cause pressure differences which causes wind), a second a difference of exactness between the physics community and the meteorological community concerning where the coriolis effect is negligible, and the others extremely minor tweaks. So far, none of the edits which have been fixing this article appear significant, so I don't see the article's "badness," merely an editor or two's vagueness about what exactly what is wrong with it. Give examples, please. Thegreatdr (talk) 18:26, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
The good news is that this page is not meant to be a discussion concerning our perception differences, just the page's errors. Point them out and they'll be fixed. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Boris there is a lot wrong. This isn't really one of the things wrong, but: the article starts: Wind is the flow of air or other gases that compose an atmosphere (including that of the planet Earth). On Earth and within other planetary atmospheres, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is... etc. But then the Causes section is entirely about earth. So I don't think the intro should be promising an article about anywhere other than earth William M. Connolley (talk) 21:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
We included that line because a section was added about wind speeds on other planets later in the article. If you think it should be removed, so be it. I'll remove it. Thegreatdr (talk) 21:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't understand. I took your comments, and fixed the apparent issue. If we start talking about atmospheric composition and flow around all of the planets and moons in the solar system, this will be a much longer article. Thegreatdr (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I think most everything on solar wind and planetary wind should be removed. They are totally different phenomenon, and just because they have the word wind in common doesn't mean they should be included in this article. Hatnotes, or the current disamb link, should be sufficient. -Atmoz (talk) 22:03, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
BTW (since we're all here) wiki as a whole is full of rubbish idealised pix of hadley/ferrel/polar cells. Atmospheric circulation is a prime offender, though it does have my beautiful pic of 500 hPa vertical motion. What I suppose I mean is that understanding of dynamical met, as expressed in the wiki articles, is poor William M. Connolley (talk) 22:11, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind if the solar wind or planetary wind info was placed within those articles, and left out of this one. You're right though...we'd need either a disambiguation page or comments at the top to link to those articles. I originally placed those in here in case someone though they should be within the wind article for FAC. Many of the meteorology articles, in general, still need work. There only appear to be two people within the met project who are making the efforts to improve the articles AND take them through GAN and FAC, though several others are also making improvements. I can certainly understand the issues people have with the GAN and FAC processes, however. Even the wind FAC is a very draining process. With as much work as I put into this article to get it through FAC, there wasn't an emphasis on fact-checking or prose quality by many reviewers, which surprised me. The Extratropical cyclone and Tropical cyclone FAC experiences were much different. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:32, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Those processes aren't meant to be about collecting merit badges, even though it may seem that way. They're meant to address issues with articles and make sure they're of quality. If GAN and FAC aren't supported by people who care about article quality, then both those processes and editors who care about the articles have failed each other and wikipedia as a whole. Now, what do you see is the most important issue to address/fix? I'm still waiting for a specific example to be pointed out so I can help out. Thegreatdr (talk) 04:35, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I tend not to make detailed lists of errors -- it's nearly the same effort to just go ahead and fix them. Broadly, I see the top priorities as being to check for factual errors; eliminate redundancy; and reorganize to keep like material together. If you want examples of the sorts of things I'm focusing on you can check the history for my edits over the past few days. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:42, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I find the section about sea and land breezes too difficult to understand. I would propose to change the text to:
In coastal regions, sea breezes and land breezes can be important factors in a location's prevailing winds. Sea breezes usually occur at night due to the fact that a low pressure zone is formed above land, and wind is sucked towards the land from the sea. At nighttime, the sea remains warmer (as it does not cool down as quick as land), hereby creating a low pressure zone over the sea. As a result, the wind is sucked towards the sea.
Seabreezes are during the day while land breezes are at night. I'll try to use some of your text for the rewrite, but we cannot use the word sucked, since these articles are supposed to read like an encyclopedia, not slang. Thegreatdr (talk) 20:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks; btw perhaps that the land/sea breeze image could be improved aswell (the 2nd image can be shown with a black air, signifying its black. Perhaps mention it at the Wiki image lab — Preceding unsigned comment added by Genetics4good (talk • contribs) 12:02, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
I count 23 images in the article already. Do we really need more? The day/night mountain wind picture seems to show the same effect than the day/night sea breeze pic [1] that is already in the article. Is that correct? I wonder if we really need an additional picture to show the same effect on a mountain? SPLETTE :]How's my driving?21:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
It's not the same effect Splette, look at the image again. However you do have a point however in that the mountain picture is a bit large; feel free to make an SVG image out of it and reduce its size (it was hand drawn and scanned which is why its so large now).
The wind speeds at 0m altitude are not shown in an image, this needs to be added, to be able to have a picture that shows basic wind speeds on the ground; or how much it is for a person (the difference between 0-1,8m will probably not make much of a difference)
91.182.189.46 (talk) 13:54, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Winds speed over land are normally measured at the standard 10 meter height. Boris is right...winds are virtually nil at ground level due to friction. Thegreatdr (talk) 06:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Lead and quality
Hi there,
I'm not normally one to complain about things, and this definitely is a good article, better than the majority in WP. However, having come here from the main page, and as with other editors above, I am surprised that this made it through FAC as the lead definitely has issues. Sadly I am too busy to coherently correct them myself so will just make a note of it here and freely label myself as "unconstructive".
Two examples from a brief look:
The first and third sentences seem to contradict each other with regard to the definition of what is meant by wind: "Wind is the flow of gases that compose the atmosphere of a planet" "In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the sun through space". Is wind restricted to planets, or can it occur in outer space as well?
Shorter duration winds, such as wind gusts, exceed the minimum value over the observed time frame and can cause substantial damage to power lines and suspension bridges.
I have no idea what this means :-) Which minimum value is exceeded?
And errors like not recognizing that the trade winds are easterly[3] or implying that the Coriolis force doesn't help define the jet stream[4] are dismaying. This is not to criticize the people who have worked on the article -- editors make mistakes, and goodness knows I've made my share. But for errors in such basic, first-order concepts to make it through FAC is a serious indictment of the FAC process. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 05:10, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
The edit you're talking about concerning how the polar easterlies are different than either the trade or westerlies was meant to convey that the polar easterlies are irregular when compared to the trades and westerlies. That was a good catch by you since it was awkwardly worded, which is a problem I sometimes have when writing/rewriting articles. The sources found concerning the jet stream's existence did not include coriolis (nor do I remember that coming up during my atmospheric sciences courses in college) so it's not like we could just add that in there without a source. I hope that wasn't done here. This was a poorly written C class article before I started making edits earlier this year. It's hard to indict the FAC (or GAN process for that matter) when this article was up for review twice for prolonged periods of time this year (between mid April and late June). There was time for feedback during those processes if you had serious questions then. Thegreatdr (talk) 11:47, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
That was in this article. Is it no longer? Either way, 1000 pardons for not remembering that the coriolis term is within the thermal wind equations. It's a topic that hasn't come up much in the 15 years since college, let alone during day-to-day forecasting. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
direction
Hi, I would like to add wind character scale ( based on direction with respect to land ( shore). The types are :
onshore ( a lot of chop and the waves),
cross-onshore,
cross-shore = side-shore ,
cross-offshore,
offshore ( it gives glassy = flat water or smooth waves).
If you do, it needs primary source, such as a book or glossary. That web site won't do it, since the article is FA class. Thegreatdr (talk) 17:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm surprised the 301 mph wind speed measured in the Bridge Creek/Moore tornado in 1999 wasn't even mentioned. I didn't think a hurricane-tornado bias existed! 199.79.170.215 (talk) 23:43, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
5.2 Westerlies and their impact - unclear sentence
The following sentence is unclear: "The westerlies can be particularly strong, especially in the southern hemisphere, where there is less land in the middle latitudes to cause the flow pattern to amplify, which slows the winds down." To me it implies that land causes the flow pattern to amplify, and amplification of the flow pattern slows the wind. This seems contradictory as my first instinct is that flow pattern amplification would intensify wind, such that clearer phrasing might be: "The westerlies can be particularly strong, especially in the southern hemisphere where there is less land in the middle latitudes, which causes the flow pattern and wind speed to amplify." Or does flow pattern amplification actually for some reason decelerate winds? If so, it might be helpful to add a bit more information about flow pattern amplification. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mainemce (talk • contribs) 06:00, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
In nature, isobars are almost always curved. The result is that a wind moving parallel to the isobars encounters a third force, the centripetal force. This is the force which tends to keep a body in motion moving in the same direction. The effect of this force, though not a force in itself, is called the centrifugal force, and acts to counteract the Coriolis force (coincidentally also the effect of a force rather than a force in itself) and decrease the wind speed. This much more common situation results in what is known as a gradient wind.
In certain circumstances, the Coriolis force acting on moving air may be almost or entirely overwhelmed by the centripetal force. Such a wind is said to be cyclostrophic, and is characterized by rapid rotation over a relatively small area. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons are examples of this type of wind.
Here is how I understand it.
Winds are categorized as geostrophic if in the dynamics the following two factors are vastly dominant: the pressure gradient force, and the coriolis effect. In the case of northern hemisphere winds circling a low pressure area, the pressure gradient acts in centripetal direction. (I will call the full circle of winds around the low pressure area 'the geostrophic flow') The coriolis effect tends to deflect any flow to the right. When there is no contraction of the geostrophic flow then there is an region of dynamic equilibrium, where the pressure gradient force is enough to maintain the same deflection to the left, but not strong enough to cause contraction of the geostrophic flow.
In regions where there is a surplus of pressure gradient force there will be a surplus of deflection to the left, which is a contraction of the geostrophic flow. This contraction is deflected to the right due to the coriolis effect, increasing the velocity of the wind. At small diameters of the geostrophic flow the coriolis effect becomes negligable, but contraction down a pressure gradient will still increase the angular velocity in the center.
There is no third force!
The coriolis effect deflects all flows to the right, therefore the direction in which it acts varies with the direction of the flow. In the absence of contraction the coriolis effect is what counteracts flow down the pressure gradient. As soon as there is contraction it is deflected to the right. --Cleon Teunissen | Talk 20:05, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
(William M. Connolley 13:29, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)) As I understand it (Holton, An Intro to Dynamic Meteorology) geostrophic approx is pressure-coriolis balance. This can only occur in the real world if the height contours are latitude circles. Gradient approx is flow parallel to the height contours, a balance between coriolis, centrifugal force and pressure gradient. It is usually a better approx to the actual wind than the geostrophic approx.
Another remark: in the case of geostrophic flow, the pressure gradient force can in particular regions be stronger than a centrifugally acting coriolis effect, the strengh of the coriolis effect is proportional to the velocity of the wind, and if there is not enough velocity then that's it. But I think the opposite will occur in very special circumstances only. It is pressure gradient force that starts air moving in the first place, so only input from outside could possibly whip up winds to a velocity where a centrifugally acting coriolis effect is stronger than the pressure gradient force. The engine of the process is the pressure gradient force; when the geostrophic flow loses kinetic energy through friction, the geostrophic flow will contract, releasing energy that is instantly converted to kinetic energy. I learned the use of flow-of-energy to keep track of the causal chain from an article by Anders Persson. A 374 KB article on the coriolis force by Anders Persson
The pressure gradient force and the coriolis effect act in a fundamentally different way. The pressure gradient force is the engine, the coriolis effect converts energy (and friction dissipates the energy). Using the expression 'coriolis force' has the disadvantage of disguising the difference between force and coriolis effect. --Cleon Teunissen | Talk 21:37, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Third remark. In the article it is stated:
This is the force which tends to keep a body in motion moving in the same direction.
In a non-rotating environmont objects will move in a straight line when there is no force being exerted, the well-known inertia. However, the solid Earth plus atmosphere is a rotating environment, and because of that the inertial properties of the air masses of the atmosphere are governed by orbital dynamics, the dynamics of mass orbiting the axis of the Earth. Inertial motion of atmospheric air masses is a curved motion with respect to the coordinate system that is co-rotating with earth. Air masses that do not move are in dynamic equilibrium, but air masses that are in motion curve away to the right (on the northern hemisphere).
So the usual thinking that mass tends to move in straight lines does not apply in the case of atmospheric motions on the rotating Earth.
Geostrophic flow away from a high pressure area is a very interesting situation. Being deflected to the right, and not being free to move outward indefinately, it will start to flow clockwise. The clockwise flow curves to the right, the local direction of inertial motion.
Any flow that rotates clockwise with a period of 12 hours will be entirely inertial motion. A clockwise atmospheric circulation with a period of 12 hours will be stable on its own; any pressure gradient would disrupt it. A clockwise circulation with a period of 12 hours is in dynamic equilibrium with respect to the inertial system it is orbiting in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SineBot (talk • contribs) 16:16, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 12 September 2014
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[1]
The Bible, John 3:5-8 [Holman Christian Standard Bible], where Jesus compares the Holy Spirit to activities of the wind.
v5 Jesus answered, “I assure you: Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit,[b] he cannot enter the kingdom of God. v6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. v7 Do not be amazed that I told you that you[c] must be born again. v8 The wind[d] blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
67.172.154.8 (talk) 13:43, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Cannolis (talk) 00:43, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
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Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Cannolis (talk) 00:43, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
![[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagrama_de_formacion_de_la_brisa-breeze.png){kind=link}