How everything works the wrong way round in the Southern Hemisphere.

You have probably noticed how on this blog we’ve been super careful about always maintaining Northern Hemisphere rotation when talking about Ekman spirals, Kelvin waves, inertial oscillations – anything that is influenced by the Earth’s rotation. Well, today we are going to take the leap and are finally starting to talk about the Southern Hemisphere. Continue reading at your own risk!

As you know, on the Southern Hemisphere everything works the opposite way from how it works on the Northern Hemisphere. This leads to the most astonishing effects. Ekman spirals turn left. Kelvin waves need the boundary to their left to propagate. Inertial oscillations oscillate counter-clockwise.

But the most astonishing thing is: it doesn’t stop there! A little-known fact is that even diffusion works the other way around there. So imagine you had a container filled with water, and you had dyed different portions of the water in different colors. If you put small bottles in the water and waited for long enough, the dye would eventually separate from the water and move itself into those small bottles! Don’t believe me? Here is proof:

Where did you think all the food dye bottles that we can buy on the Northern Hemisphere originally came from? It’s like hamburgers – they don’t grow on trees. Some people make their living by very carefully removing the freshly filled dye bottles from the containers, drying them on the outside and labeling them. The remaining water in the container can now be used to water your plants with to make the hamburgers grow faster.

Oh wait, you still reading? Happy April Fools’ Day!