Cannot get my head around the Coriolis force!
A friend of mine asked me to explain to him what a weather front is and we ended up discussing the Coriolis force. It made me realise that my understanding of it must be wrong.
1. Why is moving air across the earth's surface deflected by it's rotation? Surely the atmosphere is not stationary, i.e it rotates with the earth. Yes, there are fluctuations in the atmosphere due to uneaven heating and pressure gradients, but the surface of the earth doesn't rotate "underneath" the atmosphere. So why can't air proceed directly from high to low pressure?
2. If moving air is deflected to the RIGHT in the northern hemisphere, then why do low pressure systems rotate anti-clockwise?
3. what is it that makes weather systems track west to east (in the northern hemisphere)? Considering that the earth rotates in an anti-clockwise direction (when viewed from the north pole) I would expect the opposite.