Talk:Thermal wind
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"The equation also makes obvious that the thermal wind does not apply close to the equator: f is close to zero there."
I am not sure if this is an accurate statement. In the equation used, which is simply the geostrophic wind modified to be used between two pressure levels in the atmosphere rather than the sfc and some final height, when f approaches 0 then the K component of the cross-product becomes infinitely large. Therefore under an equivalent average temperature gradient in the tropics compared to mid-latitudes the wind should actually be stronger in the tropics. The reason we do not see very fast wind shear with height in the tropics is due to the lack of any strong temperature gradients.
24.154.96.47 22:32, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
- I rewrote it a bit (put the f on the other side). See what you think. James (intro to circ atmos) states that the TWE doesn't determine the wind in the tropics. William M. Connolley 23:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC).
[edit] Oy...three articles tackling the same topic!
Wind gradient, wind shear, and thermal wind completely overlap. I propose all three be merged together, with thermal wind being part of the wind shear article. Comments? Thegreatdr 23:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
- Well spotted. Wind gradient barely exists and should be merged into wind shear. But TW shouldn't be merged, being a specific topic of its own not normally considered in the same breath as WS William M. Connolley 23:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
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- The merging of wind gradient and wind shear is reasonable, though gradient should go into shear. Thermal wind as well as geostrophic wind, gradient wind, and similar warrant their own articles being separate terms of distinct usages. They should be expanded if size/content is the concern and you were thinking of consolidating under one umbrella article. Evolauxia 23:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
- Wind shear is definitely not identical to the thermal wind. Thermal wind is a special case of wind shear, that, on the synoptic scale, under the assumption of geostrophic balance, is due to horizontal temperature gradients, and is defined as the vertical shear of the *geostrophic* wind. Vertical wind shear can occur on smaller scales that is not in thermal wind balance, if the flow is highly ageostrophic (such as near thunderstorms for example). I made a minor edit to the article to clarify the definition.
I believe the points above are valid. I'm working on merging out thermal gradient currently... but even without the consideration that thermal wind is only valid for geostrophic wind (which is a very valid reason not to merge), I don't think they can be merged because both have enough material to warrant their own topic. Thermal wind is a mathematical proof of relationship between two things that from layman observation don't seem to be related, while wind shear is more an observational topic. I mean, I suppose I could see thermal wind being a subsection of wind shear, but I think the perspective of the articles are so different that you can't merge them. In reality, we'd have to merge thermal wind into both wind shear and temperature gradients. It'd be like merging out geostrophic wind into coriolis force and pressure gradient force. I'm going to remove the merge tags. JeopardyTempest 02:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
