Earth's Atmosphere?

Question

Okay, so earth rotates and revolves. The atmosphere moves with the revolution, but does it rotate with the earth? Like, if you had a huge pole from the ground to the end of the atmosphere, would the end of the pole be touching the same part of the atmosphere 6 hours later? Or would it have changed?

Answer 1

The atmosphere turns with the earth, yes.

Answer 2

Well aside from the fact that you cannot make a pole that long, let's talk about the Atmosphere...

Yes, the Atmosphere goes around with the Earth. However,
even though it is not noticeable to ground dwellers, the air at the surface of the Earth (where it is most dense) is moving around at one speed, and the air way up in the atmosphere is moving at totally different speeds. Have you ever heard of the Jet Stream? Well, at some places on Earth the air might be sitting still or the wind might be blowing one or two knots, while at 25,000 Feet of Altitude the air might be blowing by at 100 to 125 Knots...The Jet Stream. And, just to make things interesting it does not always travel in the same direction. Sometimes it swings up to the North, and sometimes it swings down toward the South.

Hope that this helps,
Zah

Answer 3

The atmosphere does share in the general rotation of the Earth. At a guess, I would say that the chances are pretty good that a molecule touching that pole at a given moment would find itself fairly close to the pole 6 hrs later.
At intermediate heights, though, I'll bet it wouldn't be touching the same air since air at that height will have at least some turbulence.

But the more I think about it, those molecules out at the edge of the atmosphere are moving pretty fast with few obstructions. They may not be very close to this pole at all.

Answer 4

If the atmosphere didn't turn with the earth, it would create a massive wind, would it not? We are basically fixed to the ground, so if the atmisphere was lagging the rotation of the Earth, we would literally get blown away.

I would have thought that obvious.

However, it is not an absolutely silly question, as the Earth's turning does affect the way winds move in cyclonic systems. Look up Coriolis Effect in Wikipedia. Here's an extract:

The effect is named after Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, a French scientist who described it in 1835, though the mathematics appeared in the tidal equations of Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1778. One of the most notable examples is the deflection of winds moving along the surface of the Earth to the right of the direction of travel in the Northern hemisphere and to the left of the direction of travel in the Southern hemisphere. This effect is caused by the rotation of the Earth and is responsible for the direction of the rotation of cyclones: winds around the center of a cyclone rotate counterclockwise on the northern hemisphere and clockwise on the southern hemisphere.

Answer 5

Earth's atmosphere doesn't really rotate exactly like the planet itself rotates. A phenomenon known as the Coriolis Effect greatly influences the movement of large masses of Earth's atmosphere, and weather systems embedded in the atmosphere often have their own motions.

If you put up that huge pole it would never be in contact with the same part of the atmosphere.

Answer 6

No, it would change. The atmosphere contain numerous circulations which aid in the energy balance by basically transporting heat upward and poleward. In the middle latitudes the airflow is generally from west to east (thus known as the westerlies), while around the equator the winds blow east to west (the trade winds). There is also the polar easterlies. So the air your breathing now could have been somewhere over another continent weeks ago. Knowing these wind patterns is how the round-the-world balloon flight was accomplished.

Answer 7

Imagine this: The earth rotates once every 24 hours and is roughly 24,000 miles around. Thus, it spins at close to 1,000 miles per hour. If the atmosphere didn't rotate with the planet, we'd be experiencing 1,000 mph winds all the time.

Answer 8

The earth's atmosphere does move with the revolution of the panet because it is in the earth's gravitational field. The same phenomenon is what allows satellites to be placed in geosynchronous orbits, where they appear to be stationary if viewed from the ground.