Posted on April 1, 2019 by WeatherGuys Editor(giving credit where credit is due)
We need to account for the Coriolis force to correctly analyze the large-scale movement of air in the atmosphere and water currents in the ocean.
Newton’s laws of motion mathematically describe how objects move when forces are exerted on them.
Earth is spinning like a top, even though to us who are standing on Earth, it seems that we are not moving. Newton did not account for Earth’s spin in his equations. The Coriolis force appears as an extra term when Newton’s laws are transformed to account for Earth’s spin.
Italian scientist Giovanni Battista Riccioli described the effect in 1651, explaining that Earth’s rotation causes a cannonball fired to the north to deflect to the east. Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis published a paper in 1835 describing the force mathematically.
The Coriolis force acts in a direction perpendicular to Earth’s rotational axis. Objects in the Northern Hemisphere are deflected to the right, while objects in the Southern Hemisphere are deflected to the left.