Sun rises in the east, sets in the west. Weather patterns generally go west to east.
What if this was reversed eons ago? Same climate we have now? Development rate/type of life forms changed?
What if eons ago the sun came up in the east, sets in the west but the weather generally went east to west following the rising and setting of the sun? Same climate we have now? Development rate/type of life forms changed?
Not really.
Weather patterns in the U.S. tend to go west to east, but weather patterns closer to the equator go east to west. Basically, there are different weather bands depending on your latitude.
If the Earth’s rotation were reversed so that the sun came up in the East, then the pattern would also be reversed.
Climate would be very dramatically affected. When you have winds blowing west to east, the west side of mountains tends to get a lot of moisture since the wind picks up moisture as it goes across ocean or flat land, then drops it when the air rises due to the air being cooled. Then since all of the moisture has dropped out of the air, the east side of mountains tends to be much drier (e.g. the Southwest desert areas). Flip the winds around, and which side of the mountain has plenty of rain and which side of the mountain becomes a desert also gets flipped. Nevada would probably end up being good farmland and Ohio might be a desert.
Evolution partly depends on climate, and partly depends on major upsets to a part of that climate (like a big rock slams into Mexico and everything that requires a lot of food dies). While different things would evolve in different places, the general rate of evolution probably wouldn’t change much.
Sun stays still relative to Earth. Earth turns west to east.
Nevada has mountains on both sides of it, so I doubt much would change there. Moisture transport into the US is mostly south to north via the Gulf of Mexico, so the presence of Mexico does more to dry out the western part of the US than the direction of weather patterns.
In this opposite world scenario, I could see the eastern seaboard getting somewhat wetter due to onshore winds, and some bit of rain shadow west of the Appalachian mountains, but they’re not all that tall of a mountain range. So I don’t see a whole lot changing in the Midwest, but I can definitely see the Great Plains, west Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming getting wetter since weather patterns would be pushing Gulf moisture towards them rather than away from them.
I’m not quite sure what hypothetical you are postulating here?
Do you mean the Earth could have rotated in the opposite direction?
Logically possible, but overall it would probably not have made much difference on a global scale, though local climate and geography would be different. The only obvious difference is that the rotation would be reversed relative to the orbital revolution, which might have some effect on the magnetosphere?
But weather patterns being reversed relative to the planet’s rotation? Why would that happen?
Also consider that the drift of some of the continental plates seems to be westward - hence the giant mountain chains along the west of the Americas. If the earth’s rotation were revrse, would the continents look different?
IIRC the temperate latitudes have wind direction driven by coriolis force as much as heat; similarly, the climate of northern Europe is determined by the Gulf Stream, also driven by coriolis force.
Reverse everything, presumably the west Sahara would have a stormy but wet climate like the West Indies do. However, the Carribean does not have a giant dry land mass to block moisture, so presumably not dry. Storms might more regularly go more north-westerly in the Mississippi basin, so those redwood forests would be on the west side of the Rockies - perhaps California would be more like Arizona (think, Ecuador) with minimal rainfall. This depends… the current climate is driven by the currents (sorry) up the Pacific coast, and who knows how those would change? The Gulf stream would go up the east coast and past Greenland, so up Newfoundland and Labrador would be warmer and wetter, and we’d visit Greenland to hike their redwood forests too… Scandinavia would have year-round ski resorts, Britain, ireland, and Europe north of the Alps would probably have to same cool miserable weather as Newfoundland has today, with icebergs from the North Sea a regular sight in the English Channel. France would probably be spared a bit because of the lower terrain between Switzerland and Spain.
The major land masses were all squished together in a giant “supercontinent” named Pangea. That broke up and the pieces are all kinda moving away from each other.
North and South America are moving away from Europe and Africa, and the Pacific Ocean is shrinking. Eventually the Pacific will completely disappear. There is a general northward movement though, and I believe the current prediction is that the continents will all squish back together again around the North Pole to form another supercontinent.
If you go back far enough, the continents of Earth were in completely different places. For instance, North America and Siberia were both south of the Equator in the Cambrian, so the prevailing winds may have been trade winds from the East.
Mind you, I wouldn’t like to insist that weather patterns were the same in the Cambrian as exist today.