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Coriolis Effect

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Encyclopedia of World Climatology

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Any moving object above the Earth’s surface tends to deflect from its course because of Earth’s rotation. This deflection is known as the Coriolis force, named after a French engineer and mathematician Gaspard Gustave de Coriolis (1792–1843) in 1835. Given that this deflection is an apparent force, it is perhaps more correctly known as the Coriolis effect.

The Earth rotates eastward and has the same rotational velocity. However, places at different latitude have various linear velocities. A point near the equator goes around at 1000 miles an hour, while one near the pole moves only a few miles an hour. An object launched from the equator to the north will maintain the eastward component of velocity of other objects at the equator. When this object travels away from the equator it will be heading east faster than the ground beneath it. Similarly, an object moving to the equator from the north will be moving more slowly than the ground beneath it, and deflects to the right of its true...

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Bibliography

  1. Neiburger, M., Edinger, J.G., and Bonner, W.D., 1982. Understanding Our Atmospheric Environment, San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman.

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  2. Persson, A., 1998. How do we understand the Coriolis Force? Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 79: 1373–1385.

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  3. Van Domelen, D.J., 2000. Getting around the Coriolis force. In http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~dvandom/Edu/newcor.html

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Cross-references

  1. Atmospheric Circulation, Global

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  2. Wind, Principles

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© 2005 Springer

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Yan, Y.Y. (2005). Coriolis Effect. In: Oliver, J.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of World Climatology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht . https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3266-8_60

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