Talk: Wind
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What is the difference between the versions of September 1 and August 6? RickK 02:35, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I appreciate the effort made by the writer of the original page, but there were many problems with it. I have reorganized it to follow current terms and practices in meteorology/climatology, and have extended it considerably. Denni 19:05, 2004 Jan 18 (UTC)
(William M. Connolley 16:35, 2004 Mar 10 (UTC)) I've made a load of minor hacks (and rewritten the intro). I completely removed:
- In certain circumstances, the Coriolis force acting on moving air may be almost or entirely overwhelmed by the centripetal force. One such circumstance is at the equator, where, for all practical purposes, the Coriolis force is nonexistent. Such a wind is said to be cyclostrophic, and is characterized by rapid rotation over a relatively small area. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons are examples of this type of wind.
because its badly flawed. There are no hurricanes on the equator. The orographic wind bit is dodgy. I didn't believe the origin of the phrase "trade wind".
While I cannot lay any right to this article, I nonetheless take some pride in it.
- (William M. Connolley 22:39, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)) Thats what I thought, so I've done my best to inform you rather than slip the changes in...
Many of the changes you made were good ones, especially in those cases, such as the intro, where you added to existing material. However, I am a little concerned that material has simply been deleted without correction or modification - paragraphs on the cyclostrophic and geostrophic winds (while you quite correctly say that hurricanes do not form on the equator, they have been known to drift across it).
- (William M. Connolley 22:39, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)) I'm fairly sure that hurricanes (or as wikipedia calls them, trop cyclones) depend crucially on coriolis to form and maintain. I did check on some hurricane track pages to confirm this... I can't find the page I used now. But look at http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at2003.asp or 2002 or 2001. No tracks within 10 deg of the equator. If hurricanes do occaisionally cross the equator, I think this is the exception not norm.
I would also expect that you would agree that disbelief is not a vaid reason on its own to change a point. "The wind blows trade," is legit - "trade" is an Old English word for path or track, which makes sense, because that is exactly how trade was (and still is) carried out.
- I was unsure of that. I see you've restored it - fair enough. To me, "trade wind" means the wind used for trading ships, and needs no further explanation. But OK.
What is it you find "dodgy" about orographic wind? As I have indicated, it is not a formally-employed meteorological term. It nonetheless describes a real meteorological event, and I can vouch for that, living, as I do, less than 30 km from the east slope of the Canadian Rockies.
- (William M. Connolley 22:39, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)) I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember exactly why. Apologies for needless irritation. Trying to reconstruct, I think my feeling was that an orogrpahic wind often meant a wind affected by local orography - in the sense of being turned perhaps rather than lifted. And it does seem to be a recognised term: see e.g. http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/browse?s=o&p=15
The Internet is our friend. Doing an advanced search on trade or on geostrophic/cyclostrophic wind will show you that if my facts are incorrect, so are those of meteorology professors. Denni 19:10, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)
- Re cyclostrophic... I felt your para was implying that these winds happened *particularly* over the equator. I plead that others might be similarly mislead. I've restored the para, with the equator bit removed.
I appreciate your reply, William. I'm not interested in any turf war here; this is, after all, a place of collaborative effort. We serve each other best by keeping each other honest. I'd like to keep a dialog going - I'm the first to admit that my knowledge is not complete and so I'm always open to other views. I also hate getting called out (as you might have noted), and therefore make every effort to ensure my facts are correct. Those I am not absolutely certain of, I research until I'm satisfied with their integrity. Still, things slip by; see further on the Talk:Atmospheric circulation page. Denni 18:04, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)
