How would the Coriolis effect alter movement of an air mass flowing from a higher?; How does the Coriolis effect affect air travel?; What happens to the Coriolis effect at high latitudes?; How does the Coriolis effect relate to high and low pressure?

A liquid moving over a large area such as the air currents is like the trajectory of a ball. It appears to bend to the right in the northern hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, the Coriolis effect is reversed, and ocean currents appear to bend to the left.

Coastal currents are influenced by local winds. Surface currents that occur in the open ocean are driven by complex global wind systems. To understand how wind affects ocean currents, we first need to understand the Coriolis force and the Ekman spiral.

If the Earth was stationary and did not rotate, the atmosphere would circulate in a simple back-and-forth pattern between the poles (regions of high pressure) and the equator (regions of low pressure).

However, because the Earth rotates, the circulating air is deflected. Instead of circulating in a straight line pattern, air is deflected to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere, curving its path. This deflection is called the Coriolis effect.

It is named after the French mathematician Gaspar Gustave des Coriolis (1792-1843), who studied energy transfer in rotating systems such as water wheels.