I could swear I knew the answer in grade 5 and no longer remember but like at what point is it one step to the right and no wind and suddenly wind a step further. Like rain starts from the clouds (and I assume thunder too) but what about wind.

  • @girl@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    1001 year ago

    “Wind forms when the sun heats one part of the atmosphere differently than another part. This causes expansion of warmer air, making less pressure where it is warm than where it is cooler. Air always moves from high pressure to lower pressure, and this movement of air is wind.” source

  • @AdmiralShat@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    461 year ago

    When one area cools, the air their contracts, when another area warms, it expands

    When it contacts, it pulls, when it warms, it pushes.

    • @whynotzoidberg@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      41 year ago

      According to the link in the top comment (sorry for caps, copied it out of the image): COOL AIR TRAVELS TOWARDS WARM AIR OVER LAND.

      So the warm air does push, but it pushes upwards (rises). Cool, low pressure air, then fills the void.

      This clarification brought to you by another non-expert in the field. Ha

  • Alien Surfer
    link
    fedilink
    15
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    To add to others, wind also is generated when a rain “microburst” occurs.This happens frequently in the southwest U.S.

    A microburst is when a very large amount of water is dropped out of the clouds. The gaining rain speed pushes the air below it out of the way. The air is pushed outward horizontal to the ground, which in essence is a massive wall of wind.

    Often in the Sonoron desert a microburst causes the wind to push a lot of dirt from the ground surface to be blown out with the wind. When this happens it’s called a haboob. The wall of thick dust and particles can be up to a mile high and as wide as a city.

    Below is a link to an image of a haboob over Phoenix, Arizona.

    Haboob over Phoenix AZ USA

  • @doczombie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    111 year ago

    It’s easier to think about it in terms of where is the wind going.

    Air moves into adjacent regions that have lower pressure. It begins everywhere but is moving towards these areas of lower pressure.

  • @Darc@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    91 year ago

    All weather is a result of heat exchange and pressure differentials caused by an unequally heated atmosphere. (The side toward the sun is warmer.)

    • Natanael
      link
      fedilink
      6
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      For mere mortals: various exposed land masses gets heated by sunlight, and the air in contact with that land gets heated too.

      When air gets warmer it expands (because atoms move and collide faster). That makes it less dense, so colder and denser air (with its slower atoms) falls in under the warm air and pushes the warm air up. If the ground is still warmer then that cold air gets heated too.

      When that happens just at one point it makes air move around that warm ground in a “donut shape”, up in the center and out and down and back in.

      When that happens at many different locations then those air movements collide with each other, and now we have complicated weather which takes big supercomputers to simulate.

  • Kalkaline
    link
    fedilink
    91 year ago

    Pressure differential from high and low pressure systems in the weather pattern.

  • @detalferous@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    81 year ago

    Where does an ocean wave start?

    All currents are circular when you zoom out far enough, and are driven by inequalities in energy. Inequalities in thermal energy, for wind, and wind energy, for waves. Inequalities in voltage drive electrical current, which is remarkable fluid like, in its behavior.

  • @anti@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    71 year ago

    Terry Pratchett taught me that wind is caused by all of the trees waving about.