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Does the Earth spin within her atmosphere ?

Or does the Earth and her atmosphere spin as a complete unit ?

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    both...and neither...

    The planet's rotation DOES indeed affect the atmosphere, and there ARE very fast winds up in the tropopause that are largely a consequence of this- they make up the Jet Stream, as a matter of fact. It's all frightfully complicated, but generally, atmospheric motion imparted by rotational forces decreases with altitude; right above the ground, the atmosphere can be said to rotate at the same velocity as the planet-body, but higher up, as the atmosphere becomes increasingly rarified, the effects are more pronounced. I can't think of a decent analogue that's less complicated, and this is one of those times I REALLY wish I could draw a picture. Atmospheric currents...a lot of the phenomenon we call weather is a consequence of this differential atmospheric deflection.

  • 1 decade ago

    If the atmosphere of Earth were not spinning, you would feel dangerously large gusts of wind due to all air for some reason being "sidereal synchronous" unless you live at either the north or south pole.

    For the most part, the atmosphere is spinning along with Earth as a complete unit...just not as a perfect rigid body. No substantially large force is really necessary to glue the atmosphere to the Earth and drag because the atmosphere has inertia, and keeps going at its speed. Gravity makes it fall, and thermal pressure supports it. Gravity dominates thermal pressure somewhat to accelerate the atmosphere inward.

    There are other inertial effects which cause weather patterns due to the air not being rigidly held to Earth. For instance, the Coriolis effect gives rise to air patterns tending to circulate as measured from the rotating ground as a reference frame.

  • 1 decade ago

    the atmosphere spins with the earth

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    I would have thought as a unit. If not the wind would be incredible given the speed that the earth spins at.

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  • 5 years ago

    actually whole atmosphere is bound to earth under the influence of gravity. all the movement of clouds depends on the direction of wind which flows due to difference in pressure in various regions of earth. wind direction is from a location of high pressure to a location of low pressure. the only thing in my thought happens due to the earth`s rotation is creation of tides/waves in the oceans and other large water bodies. if you through an object with v>11.2 km/s i.e escape velocity the object will clear the barrier of gravity of earth and will never return back, however if velocity is much less, since earth has a very low rotational speed even if you consider such an object from outer space(i.e. non inertial frame) the pseudo force due to earth`s rotation is so much less in compare to gravitational force and wind force as it can be neclected or it is negligible. so the object will land upon the same place if thrown perpendicular untill their is no significant effect of wind on object.

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