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Abstract

It is natural to think that the atmosphere rotates with the same velocity the solid Earth although is not at all obvious why this should happen. In general we could say that the Earth drags the atmosphere because of the friction between the surface and the atmospheric layers near it. A very important role is accomplished by the orography with the mountain chains which constitute one of the major points of resistance. Again is not possible to make any generalizations because, as we have seen already, the mountain range may be where high and low pressure zones are located on the opposite sides, so that the drag must take into account the meteorological situation. The layer that directly interacts with the surface is called the planetary boundary layer, and, except for the “planetary” part is a very familiar concept for people interested in fluid dynamics.

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Visconti, G. (2001). The Planetary Boundary layer. In: Fundamentals of Physics and Chemistry of the Atmosphere. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04540-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04540-4_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-04542-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-04540-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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