Agriculture Business Week

Wind is simply air in motion. It is caused by the sun’s uneven heating of the Earth’s surface. This happens when the Earth’s surface which is made of different types of land and water; absorbs the sun’s heat at different rates. The presence of clouds can also locally reduce the effectiveness of the sun’s rays.

During the day, the air above the land heats up faster than the air over water. The warm air over the land expands and rises up in the atmosphere, and the heavier, cooler air rushes in to take its place, creating winds. At night, the small-scale winds are reversed because the air is getting cool more rapidly over land than over water.

In the same way, the large scale atmospheric winds that circle the Earth are created because the land and sea near the earth’s equator is heated more by the sun than the land and sea near the North and South Poles.

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