Understanding Coreolis effect with help from Neil Degrasse Tyson’s vid
I had an effin’ STEM degree, by this point 20 years in industry should mean its simple yet while doing Meteorology I struggled to get the Coriolis effect.
2 points put togather caused me to question the educations efficacy.
Due to the Coriolis Effect, in the northern hemisphere winds tends to take right turns.
Also due to the Coriolis effect, in the northern hemisphere, low pressure systems have anti-clockwise winds
I understood point 1, that was simple physics but I could not get around 2, on the face both points were in conflict.
if winds turn right, then it surely is flowing clockwise.
Luckily NGT had just the perfect video from his Startalk podcast to help me.
The verbal explanation helped, but without visuals its still not straightforward for this boy. So I consulted mr whiteboard.
To simplify matter, I could imagine earth unrolled into horizontal strips moving horizontally with different speeds
From the bottom, “Equator” would move west to east at 1680km/hr, while “Britain” travels eastward 1073km/hr, and slowest at tope is Iceland at 700km/hr.
If you’re a marble (or wind) moving from Iceland downwards to Britain, due to Iceland’s relatively slower horizontal speed it’ll observe that you’re turning right.
Similarly, if the marble moves upwards from Equator towards Britain, again due to its higher relative speed it’ll appear to had made a right turn too.
With reference to Doc Tyson’s explainer, andf rom the “earth latitude as horizontal tapes” thought experiment above, we establish that winds make right turn regardless of whether it is flowing North, or South (obviously this is only valid for the Northern Hemisphere where normal people live).
Now imagine a “Low Pressure Region” LPR is on the “Britain” horizontal tape"….and winds flow to it from “High Pressure Region” HPR from the “Iceland tape” and “Equator tape”.
The southbound wind turning right will “miss” the LPR, it would arrive behind the LPR, whilst a Northbound wind will turn right and arrive “in front” of the LPR.
And per Mr Whiteboard, it looks like the wind is flowing around the LPR with an Anti-clockwise direction!
Thank you Doc Tyson!
p/s I reference the spin speed of various locations from this article below (thanks!) and just used Maps to get an approximate lattitudes.
Britain is roughly 50 degrees
Iceland is roughly 65 degrees
Bing also is proving ever useful by helping me get there so quick
