What is wind? How does it come to be? What is it? Take a second to actually think about it. Does the movement of trees create wind or do they move because of wind? Do wind turbines create wind or do they get power from wind? Waves worsen in the wind because they’re being pushed. A gust of wind can blow a leaf 1000 miles. Sandstorms. Hurricanes. Tornadoes. All a product of wind. But what is it?

According to National Geographic, the official definition is “The movement of air caused by the uneven heating of the Earth by the Sun”. The difference in atmospheric pressure is the cause of wind. All of this relates back to the equator where the Sun has more of an effect there than anywhere else on the planet. Pretty cool, right? As we probably all know, warm air rises and cool air sinks. When the warm air moves towards the poles that’s called a low pressure system, and when the cool air moves to replace the warm air that’s called a high pressure system. That leads to fronts and all sorts of different weather patterns which is something for another article.

So how does all this cause wind to travel all over the world? Well, they come from different zones of wind. There are five different zones: Polar Easterlies, Westerlies, Horse Latitudes, Trade Winds, and Doldrums.  Each has a prevailing wind which is the wind that blows from a single direction, and when they meet it’s called a front. The polars are in the east and blow into the westerlies which blow west through the Southern Hemisphere. Horse Latitudes cover most of the deserts across Africa and South America, and the trade winds reign over the Tropics. Doldrums are where the different zones meet.

They say that a butterfly’s flutter can cause a tornado and that’s not too far of a reach. The smallest thing can cause huge impacts as observed in Edward Lorenz’s experiment. He rounded 0.506127 to 0.506 and as a result had massive, massive changes to his computer program that consisted of two months of simulated weather patterns. After this observation is when he stated that he believed a butterfly could have a huge effect halfway around the world. This is called “The Butterfly Effect”, something I’m sure everyone has heard about or at least recognizes. Over time it’s moved from just weather related to an umbrella term for really anything you could think of. It’s the huge effect of such a small motion, thought,  belief, or something that would otherwise seem so small and insignificant.

The effect of wind and air movement travels far beyond what we might believe when we first think about it. So the next time you take a breath or maybe see leaves floating along in the wind currents just think about where it comes from and how far it traveled to get to you. Make sure to never doubt yourself. If a butterfly can start a tornado just think about what small choice you can make that can ripple so far away, or on the other hand, what the consequences of such a small act could be. Just think.