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Re: Hot air rising and automobile thermometers



On Fri, 23 Jul 1999, brian whatcott wrote:

We could visualise an ordinary wind as flowing nearly parallel to
lines of equal atmospheric pressure ('isobars') across a plane surface
and motivated by the pressure gradient between them.

[snip]

As to the reason for naming the temperature-driven winds (as opposed
to the pressure-driven common wind) I suppose one should consult
Xenophon's description of the uphill march of Cyrus' son into Asia.
It was the prototype anabasis. Katabasis was the Greek word
for going down.

At the risk of sounding pedantic (perhaps I've caught the bug), what is
the difference between an "ordinary wind", a "common wind", a
"temperature-driven wind" and a "pressure-driven" wind? I thought all
winds were pressure driven. Am I to assume that the sea-breeze is a
temperature-driven wind whereas the jet stream is made up of
pressure-driven winds? Is it just the scale of the pressure field that
distinguishes the two?

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| Robert Cohen Department of Physics |
| East Stroudsburg University |
| bbq@esu.edu East Stroudsburg, PA 18301 |
| http://www.esu.edu/~bbq/ (570) 422-3428 |
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