Wind and air masses help to move energy around the world. Movements of air around the world are called winds. Winds are complex for 2 reasons. 1. Earth spins on its axis from west to east which causes the winds to veer sideways. So in the northern hemisphere the winds appear to be going right and in the Southern hemisphere the winds appear to be moving left. 2. Land and Water on Earth are not evenly distributed. There is more land in the northern hemisphere than there is in the southern hemisphere. Because land heats up faster than water To simplify: the air at the equator is hot. The air at the poles is cold, when warm air rises cold air rushes in to fill the empty space. We call this wind. In Ontario our prevailing winds come from the west. Air masses: Large bodies of air, Warm masses from the equator, clod masses from the poles. Air masses that come over water tend to be warmer and wetter. When warm air masses meet, the warm air is forced up and the cold air rushes to fill its place. The warm air will them cool condense, and precipitate. The rotation of the Earth causes air masses to spin, because the equator is moving faster than any other part of the planet. If air is moving north, away from the equator. It will veer to the east, because it is traveling slightly faster than the Earth beneath it. So hurricanes of storm systems in the northern hemisphere usually spin counter clockwise.
