PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Geostrophic wind vs pressure gradient question
Old 6th Apr 2016, 13:31
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Alex Whittingham
 
Join Date: May 1999
Location: Bristol, England
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A perfect summary - thank you. One postscript; textbooks written for the EASA ATPL will usually refer to centrifugal force rather than centripetal and that makes force diagrams for airflow around curved isobars look different from 'standard' textbooks. It is, unfortunately, impossible to convince EASA that their usage of the term is misleading and they ask questions such as:

Q.At the same latitude the geostrophic wind is less than the gradient wind around an anticyclone with equal pressure gradient because the:

(A) Centrifugal force is added to the pressure gradient
(B) Centrifugal force opposes the pressure gradient
(C) Effect of coriolis is added to friction
(D) Coriolis effect opposes the centrifugal force
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