Flashback to school days. Convection currents. Something about the oceans and wind. Blah blah blah. Eager for lunchtime since there’s a Beyblade battle planned.
Fast forward to now. I’m older. Wiser. Yet still childishly optimistic. And most of all, curious. I find myself thinking about how things work, how things connect. So, convection currents:
The Sun warms the land faster than it warms the sea. The air above the land heats up, expands and rises, leaving slightly lower pressure near the ground. Cooler, denser air over the sea is then pushed inland from an area of relatively higher pressure to replace it.
Higher up, the rising warm air spreads outward and eventually cools, helping to complete the loop. That moving cycle of warm air rising, and cooler air replacing it, is a convection current. And the air moving along the ground is wind.
And if you’ve seen those circular wind motions on weather reports, that’s due to the Coriolis effect. The earth’s rotation making moving air curve rather than travel in a perfectly straight line. Winds circle around areas of high and low pressure.
Here’s a cool site to visualise weather systems.