Relationship of wind to pressure and governing forces

The changing wind patterns are governed by Newton’s second law of motion, which states that the sum of the forces acting on a body equals the product of the mass of that body and the acceleration caused by those forces. The basic relationship between atmospheric pressure and horizontal wind is revealed by disregarding friction and any changes in wind direction and speed to yield the mathematical relationship where u is the zonal wind speed (+ eastward), v the meridional wind speed (+ northward), f = 2ω sin ϕ (Coriolis parameter), ω the angular velocity of Earth’s rotation, ϕ the latitude, ρ the air density (mass per unit volume), p the pressure, and x and y the distances toward the east and north, respectively. This simple non-accelerating flow is known as geostrophic balance and yields a motion field known as the geostrophic wind. Equation (1) expresses, for both the x and y directions, a balance between the force created by horizontal differences in pressure (the horizontal pressure-gradient force) and an apparent force that results from Earth’s rotation (the Coriolis force). The pressure-gradient force expresses the tendency of pressure differences to effectuate air movement from higher to lower pressure. The Coriolis force arises because the air motions are observed on a rotating nearly spherical body. The total motion of a parcel of air has two parts: (1) the motion relative to Earth as if the planet were fixed, and (2) the motion given to the parcel of air by the planet’s rotation. When the atmosphere is viewed from a fixed point in space, Earth’s rotation is apparent. An observer in space would witness the total motion of the atmosphere. Conversely, an observer on the ground sees and measures only the relative motion of the atmosphere, because he is also rotating and cannot see directly the rotational motion applied by Earth. Instead, the observer on the ground sees the effect of the rotation as a deviation applied to the relative motion. The quantity that describes this deviation is the Coriolis force. Because the Coriolis force results from a ground-level frame of reference on a rotating planet, it is not a true force.

More specifically, the observer on the ground experiences the Coriolis force as a deflection of the relative motion to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. Of particular significance in this simple model of wind-pressure relationships is the fact that the geostrophic wind blows in a direction parallel to the isobars, with the low pressure on the observer’s left as he looks downwind in the Northern Hemisphere and on his right in the Southern Hemisphere.

Wind speed increases as the distance between isobars decreases (or pressure gradient increases). Curvature (i.e., changes in wind direction) can be added to this model with relative ease in a flow representation known as the gradient wind. The basic wind-pressure relationships, however, remain qualitatively the same. Of greatest importance is the fact that large-scale, observed winds tend to behave much as the geostrophic- or gradient-flow models predict in most of the atmosphere. The most notable exceptions occur in low latitudes, where the Coriolis parameter becomes very small—equation (1) cannot be used to provide a reliable wind estimate—and in the lowest kilometre of the atmosphere, where friction becomes important. The friction induced by airflow over the underlying surface reduces the wind speed and alters the simple balance of forces such that the wind blows with a component toward lower pressure.