Science Tidbits: What Causes Wind?
Everywhere on this Earth, wind is a constant. The movement of air is a simple fact of nature. But what causes wind? Throughout history, people have come up with countless explanations. The ancient Greeks, like many other cultures, believed that wind was caused by gods. According to science, wind is caused by the sun, the sea, and Earth’s rotation.
The sun heats the gasses in our atmosphere unevenly, creating differences in atmospheric pressure. Exacerbating this is the sea: the water covering most of our planet takes longer to be heated than the land, furthering the disparity in pressure. Due to the diffusion effect (nature seeking balance between high and low pressure areas), gasses from areas with a higher atmospheric pressure move towards those with a lower one.
Finally, the aforementioned diffusion effect pairs with differences in the speed of Earth’s rotation and causes the Coriolis effect (a phenomenon that causes fluids, like water and air, to curve as they travel across or above Earth’s surface). This is what causes cyclones and trade winds.
https://scijinks.gov/wind/
https://www.accuweather.com/en/accuweather-ready/what-causes-wind/686154
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/wind/
