The Climate Classroom: Coriolis Effect
Most of our weather comes from a force that doesn't actually exist. It just looks that way because we're standing on a rotating, spherical planet. You may have even heard of the coriolis effect before - perhaps as a reason why some sinks drain "counter clockwise" and others drain "clockwise". That actually has nothing to do with the coriolis effect, but the impact it has is quite real.
This is a great experiment to do with your kids. You just need a merry-go-round, like you can find at many playgrounds.
When I throw a ball to someone standing nearby when I'm not moving... it comes right to them. The same is true when people throw each other a ball on a stationary merry-go-round.
The Earth rotates on its axis. It's not standing still. To simulate this, we spun the merry-go-round to represent the Earth.
We then threw the ball directly to the person on the opposite side of the merry-go-round while it was spinning counter clockwise. The ball is caught by the person to the right of the thrower. Earth rotates counter clockwise, when viewed from above the north pole. So this simulates how air would move in the northern hemisphere.
From the merry-go-round, it looked like the ball bent in mid-air. The participants agreed that the ball curved in mid-air, even though it was thrown straight.
However, from an overhead view, the ball still moved in a straight line. This is called the Coriolis effect (also known as a "psuedo" force - meaning a force that looks like it exists but doesn't) and it's one of the single most important concepts in all of meteorology.
In Colorado, the Coriolis effect is responsible for our jet stream which brings storms to us. It's our storm conveyor belt. It's also why areas of low-pressure spin counterclockwise and why high-pressure systems spin clockwise.
Ultimately, it explains most of why air moves the way it moves and therefore explains how we get the weather we do.
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