by MarkBour » Mon Nov 27, 2017 5:03 pm
I learned the answer to: "Why do northern hurricanes always spin counter-clockwise" from pop-science articles and Google. I can see from this detailed depiction that my understanding was incomplete.
The video shows that (at least during most of the season) the entire North Atlantic basin showed an overall clockwise circulation. If you look hard enough, near Europe, you can even see some tighter rotations occurring that are clockwise. Nevertheless, every tight circulation (hurricane) spun counterclockwise, and also spun quite rapidly compared to the rest of the activity. So, now I have a slightly deeper understanding of the Coriolis effect. Perhaps I'm the only student who missed this the first time through learning about it.
In fact the Coriolis effect causes moving air masses in the northern hemisphere to deflect into a clockwise curve. But the effect on a small-scale circulation of a low-pressure area, where air is rushing in to the center from all sides, causes the eye to spin in the opposite direction. Hence, the central storm winds spin counter-clockwise. It is the same clockwise turning on a larger scale, but it appears negative around a low-pressure center.
The video also shows some interesting interactions between hurricanes. One hurricane can strongly influence the movement of another, and there were even some interactions that looked like one hurricane destroyed another, although there are lots of factors that would make such a conclusion far too simplistic.
I learned the answer to: "Why do northern hurricanes always spin counter-clockwise" from pop-science articles and Google. I can see from this detailed depiction that my understanding was incomplete.
The video shows that (at least during most of the season) the entire North Atlantic basin showed an overall clockwise circulation. If you look hard enough, near Europe, you can even see some tighter rotations occurring that are clockwise. Nevertheless, every tight circulation (hurricane) spun counterclockwise, and also spun quite rapidly compared to the rest of the activity. So, now I have a slightly deeper understanding of the Coriolis effect. Perhaps I'm the only student who missed this the first time through learning about it.
In fact the Coriolis effect causes moving air masses in the northern hemisphere to deflect into a [i]clockwise[/i] curve. But the effect on a small-scale circulation of a low-pressure area, where air is rushing in to the center from all sides, causes the eye to spin in the opposite direction. Hence, the central storm winds spin [i]counter-clockwise[/i]. It is the same clockwise turning on a larger scale, but it appears negative around a low-pressure center.
The video also shows some interesting interactions between hurricanes. One hurricane can strongly influence the movement of another, and there were even some interactions that looked like one hurricane destroyed another, although there are lots of factors that would make such a conclusion far too simplistic.