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The Dance of Air and Sea: How Oceans, Weather, and Life Link Together ReviewTaylor has a nice reporting style which is fine except when he is dealing with more difficult concepts, e.g. Rossby waves, or unresolved issues where the reader can get lost in the back and forth without a proper synthesis. He does particularly well with ecology, but perhaps I think that because I started with more understanding of the concepts. If Taylor finds something interesting or amusing, he will put it in the book even if it has no real link to anything else; this is fine with me as I always enjoyed the extraneous material.
At the end of this write-up is the best explanation of the Coriolis "force" I could find on the web. I will first try to summarize the most important material on air and water circulation.
In general winds and water redistribute heat toward the poles, with winds driving ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream. Since cold air is denser than warm air, you would expect surface winds in the Northern hemisphere (I will focus on that hemisphere) to blow like the trade winds, from north to south, or northeast to southwest because of the Coriolis force. However, surprisingly, there is a high pressure area 30 degrees north (the horse latitudes), causing winds to blow north from there, or from southWEST to northeast because of the Coriolis force. These are the prevailing westerlies which influence US winters, and account much more than the Gulf stream for the moderate winter temperatures in Europe (not just because of the direction from the south, but because they are flowing over water before arriving in Europe, and in winter water is usually warmer than land).
There is also a tendency for colder water to sink, again because of relative density. This relative density is a major contributor to a worldwide pattern of slow ocean circulation (thermohaline circulation) which also helps redistribute heat toward the poles. In the earth's history, sudden release of fresh water from the north pole due to icebergs melting or huge continental lakes quickly draining, has interfered with the thermohaline due to the lower density of fresh to salty water, thereby having a cooling effect on the northern temperate areas.
Monsoons are created because of the temperature differential between land and sea, the sea being cooler in summer, so winds blow on shore carrying moisture. This air rises due to mountains or other causes, therefore cooling, and releasing precipitation.
CORIOLIS "FORCE". "When an object starts to move north or south and is not firmly connected to the ground (air, artillery fire, etc) then it maintains its initial eastward speed as it moves. An object leaving the equator will retain the eastward speed of other objects at the equator, but if it travels far enough it will no longer be going east at the same speed the ground beneath it is. In reality there is no actual force involved, the ground is simply moving at a different speed than the object is "used to". The result is that an object travelling away from the equator will be heading east faster than the ground and will seem to be forced east by some mysterious force. Objects travelling towards the equator will be going more slowly than the ground beneath them and will seem to be forced west. [look up Coriolis force at wisc.edu where there is also a simple diagram]
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