Unless you are a weird being raised in a laboratory of mad scientists since your childhood, or you are an artificial intelligence capable of understanding what I write you know what the wind is. A powerful phenomenon showing us the superiority of nature to man. Since a long time we take advantage of the wind on Earth to move or to produce energy for example. But what is at the origin of the wind? Contrary to what is said to young children, it does not come from a superior being who enjoys blowing. This results from much more complex phenomena. To begin we need a definition of the wind, ask uncle wikipedia:
Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On the surface of the Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air.
More simply, we can say that the wind is a displacement of a mass of air in the atmosphere.
Why is there wind ?
You are probably wondering where the wind comes from if you clicked on this post. I will try to
explain all the physical systems involved in the appearance of the wind.
Differences in pressure
The major factor in the appearance of the wind is the existence of pressure differences in our atmosphere. In fact, the noticeable pressure differences in the atmosphere produce wind. Our world is in perpetual search of the balance, if the pressure is low at a place and high at another place nearby then a mass of area will move from the zone of high pressure (anticyclone) to the zone of low pressure (depression). These pressure differences are due to the Sun, it does not send energy uniformly on our planet, which causes temperature variations, the hot air is less dense than the cold air, the zones hot air will have a lower pressure than in cold air zones.
The so-called Coriolis force discovered by the eponymous engineer and mathematician is a fairly simple physical law, it says that any body moving in the northern hemisphere is deflected to its right (to its left in the Southern Hemisphere), to the Man's scale is negligible but for a wind that travels over long distances this force has a great effect on the wind's path. Indeed the wind tends to be curved rather than linear. That is why, in the northern hemisphere, the wind trajectory will form a counterclockwise spiral around a depression and an hourly spiral around an anti-cyclone (and vice versa in the southern hemisphere).
Topography
The last factor is a lesser factor in the movement of the wind and its properties, the relief of an environment can indeed influence the direction of the wind and its force, The friction between different air masses or between the terrestrial surfaces can modify the local characteristics of the wind, for example a frictional air mass with a lake or the sea will be wetter than the same wind inland.
Here you are, now you know more about the wind and its formation, I hope to have taught you something :)
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