What Makes the Wind

Pressure, heat and spin

An interactive lesson with 7 steps, about 6 minutes: you predict, drag and solve, with instant feedback on every answer. It runs in your browser and needs JavaScript.

What you’ll learn

• Uneven heating creates pressure differences, which drive winds.
• Sea breezes blow onshore by day because land heats faster than water.
• Large-scale winds follow isobars because of the Coriolis effect (geostrophic balance).

Steps

1. The sea breeze
2. Pushed by pressure
3. Along the isobars
4. How the wind turns
5. The geostrophic wind
6. Wind and latitude
7. No hurricanes at the equator