Direction of Wind
Name: _________________________________________ Period: ______ Date: ____________________
Essential Question: How is wind affected by temperature differences and earth’s rotation?
Instructions: Watch the video from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--faa2w_NJo to answer the
following questions.
Wind is caused by the uneven heating of the atmosphere. Since the Earth is rotating, the air does not
flow directly from high to low pressure, but it is deflected to the right in the Northern Hemisphere; to
the left in the Southern Hemisphere, this is known as Coriolis effect.
http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_causes_wind.htm
1. What causes wind?
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2. Why does the warm air rise?
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3. Why does the cold air sink?
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4. Warm air is ( low, high) __________ pressure and it rises.
5. Cold air is ( low, high) __________ pressure and it ( rises, sinks) ______________.
6. What happens to the rising air?
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7.What is wind?
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8. Wind comes from the energy of the ____________.
9. What causes sea breeze?
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10. Sea breeze happens during the ( day, night) ___________________________.
11. Water is ( colder, warmer)______________ than land during the day.
12. What is land breeze?
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13. Wind blows from high pressure to ( low pressure, medium pressure)____________________
14. In land breeze air currents move from (land, water)__________ to (land, water)_____________
15. Coastal areas receive more rain and thunderstorms than the inland because of (evaporation, air
pressure) _________________________________filling up clouds.
16. Where can you find more vegetation ( near the shoreline, mountainside)?
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17. What is the Coriolis effect? ( Read the paragraph above)
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Day-sea breeze
Night-land breeze
Sea and Land Breezes describe the wind that blows
onshore from sea to land during the day and blows
offshore in the evening.
Why do I care? During the summer, the sea breezes
are stronger than in winter because of the large
temperature differences between land and ocean
water that time of year. The fronts caused by the
sea breezes along the coast can provide a trigger to
daily thunderstorm activity in coastal areas,
particularly along the peninsula of Florida.
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/edu/k12/.breezes
Instructions: Use the figure above to answer questions
18. When does sea breeze happen (day, night)? ______________________________________________
19. When does land breeze happen ( day, night)?_____________________________________________
20. How are sea breeze and land breeze described? ___________________________________________
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21. At daytime, which heats up faster or has low pressure( land, sea)? ____________________________
22. At nighttime, which heats up faster or has low pressure ( land, sea)? __________________________
23. Why do we experience more thunderstorms during the spring and summer?
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Instructions: Watch the video from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcPs_OdQOYU or read the
paragraph below to answer the following questions.
The Coriolis effect is the apparent curvature of
global winds, ocean currents, and everything else that
moves freely across the Earth’s surface. If not for the
Earth’s rotation, global winds would blow in straight northsouth lines. What actually happens is that global winds blow
diagonally. The Coriolis effect influences wind direction
around the world in this way: in the Northern Hemisphere it
curves winds to the right; in the Southern Hemisphere it
curves them left. The exception is with low pressure
systems. In these systems there is a balance between the
Coriolis effect and the pressure gradient force and the
winds flow in reverse. http://www.universetoday.com/73828/what-is-the-coriolis-effect/#ixzz2nGCm1d1a
24. What is the Coriolis effect? ___________________________________________________________
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25. What would be the direction of the global winds if the earth is not rotating?
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26. How does Coriolis effect influence the direction of wind the Northern Hemisphere?
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27. How does Coriolis effect influence the direction of wind the Southern Hemisphere?
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