geostrophic wind
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.55 in modern English
27
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
2
Syllables
13
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A wind whose direction and speed are determined by a balance of the horizontal pressure gradient force and the force due to the earth's rotation to the left in the northern hemisphere and to the right in the southern hemisphere.
noun
That horizontal wind velocity for which the Coriolis force exactly balances the horizontal pressure gradient force. The geostrophic wind is thus directed along the contour lines on a constant-pressure surface (or along the isobars in a geopotential surface) with low elevations (or low pressure) to the left in the northern hemisphere and to the right in the southern hemisphere.