CSET Hot Air

Mar
27

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Teacher candidates studying to pass the CSET Multiple Subjects examination should be able to answer a question that deals with the wind. Wind questions on science exams are very common and hence have a high probability of appearing on the CSET.

Wind is the movement of air over the surface of the Earth, from areas of high pressure to low pressure.

When energy reaches the Earth, the ground and other surfaces absorb it, and heat the surrounding air. It’s these differences in temperature, together with the rotation of our planet, that create the wind.

The two main forces are:

1) The rotation of the earth
As the earth spins on its axis it drags the atmosphere round with it. However, the air higher up in the atmosphere is less affected by this dragging/stirring effect. The difference in the air speed at different levels in the atmosphere causes the air to mix, forming turbulence, which causes wind at the earth’s surface.

The rotation of the earth causes another related phenomenon, the Coriolis force.

When air is moving over the surface of the earth as it rotates, the path of the moving air veers to the right. As a result instead of the air (or wind) moving in a straight line from areas of higher pressure to areas of lower pressure, the wind circles in a clockwise direction towards the area of low pressure. In the Southern hemisphere, the wind will circle in an anti-clockwise direction and clockwise in the Northern hemisphere.

2) The heating effect of the sun
The warming effect of the sun varies with latitude and with the time of day. Warmer air is less dense than cooler air, and rises above it, so the pressure above the equator is lower than the pressure above the poles. Heated air rises above the equator (creating a low-pressure belt around the planet’s middle) and heads for the poles where it cools, drops downward, and returns to the equator like a world class draft along the floor.

The trade winds are a pattern of wind that are found in bands around the Earth’s equatorial region. The trade winds are the prevailing winds in the tropics, blowing from the high-pressure area in the horse latitudes (subtropic latitudes between 30 and 35 degrees both north and south) towards the low-pressure area around the equator. The trade winds blow predominantly

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