How Quantum Physics Describes Earth's Weather Patterns | Quanta Magazine

Abstraction: Earth modeled as topological insulator explaining equatorial Kelvin waves

Key points:

• In 2017, Brad Marston, Pierre Delplace, and Antoine Venaille showed equatorial Kelvin waves are analogous to edge currents in topological insulators — the Coriolis force plays the role of a magnetic field twisting fluid flows
• The equator acts as a boundary between two "insulators" (the hemispheres), explaining why Kelvin waves always travel eastward and persist amid atmospheric chaos
• A 2023 preprint (Marston, Weixuan Xu et al.) directly observed twisted Poincaré-gravity waves in ERA5 stratosphere data, confirming the topological theory observationally for the first time
• The wave-function phase spiraled to form a vortex in wave-vector space — the hallmark of topological protection seen in quantum materials
• Klaus von Klitzing's 1980 discovery of the quantum Hall effect and topological insulators was the conceptual foundation; his super-chilled electrons produce robust edge currents analogous to Kelvin waves
• The framework is now being extended to magnetized plasmas, self-propelled particle collections, and stellar plasma dynamics

Connections: Topological Insulators · Fluid Dynamics · Quantum Hall Effect · Topology

Source: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-quantum-physics-describes-earths-weather-patterns-20230718/