Overlooked centrifugal and Coriolis forces in the Atmosphere due to the Earth's motion in the solar system

TL;DR

This paper investigates the often-overlooked Coriolis and centrifugal forces caused by Earth's revolution around the Sun and the Earth-Moon system, revealing their significant impact on atmospheric circulation dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed evaluation of the Coriolis and centrifugal effects due to Earth's orbital motion, highlighting their importance in atmospheric modeling.

Findings

Revolution adds time-dependent Coriolis terms to atmospheric forces.

Centrifugal accelerations are partially balanced by gravitational forces.

Revolution complicates the Earth's atmospheric dynamics.

Abstract

The slow revolution of the Earth and Moon around their barycentrum does not induce Coriolis accelerations. On the other hand, the motion of Sun and Earth is a rotation with Coriolis forces which appear not to have been calculated yet, nor have the inertial accelerations within the system of motion of all three celestial bodies. It is the purpose of this contribution to evaluate the related Coriolis and centrifugal terms and to compare them to the available atmospheric standard terms. It is a main result that the revolution is of central importance in the combined dynamics of Earth, Moon and Sun. Covariant flow equations are well known tools for dealing with such complicated flow settings. They are used here to quantify the effects of the Earth's revolution around the Earth-Moon barycenter and its rotation around the Sun on the atmospheric circulation. It is found that the motion around the Sun adds time dependent terms to the standard Coriolis forces. The related centrifugal accelerations are presented. A major part of these accelerations is balanced by the gravitational attraction by Moon and Sun, but important unbalanced contributions remain. New light on the consequences of the Earth's revolution is shed by repeating the calculations for a rotating Earth-Moon pair. It is found that the revolution complicates the atmospheric dynamics.