Would there still be wind if Earth had no water?

Question

If there was no water on the earth would there still be wind? If the planet was basically a desert from pole to pole, east to west, would the wind still blow? I understand that wind is a result of a difference in pressure, but is it true that water being naturally cooler is what creates that pressure difference?

I don't find any answers that clearly state whether or not wind would still exist without water and whether or not water is the originating source of wind. I see that most of the answers that talk about the source of wind say that cooler air moves in as warmer air rises, but wouldn't all the air in the world be warm/hot without water to cool it? The pressure difference seems to be cool versus warm.

Answer 1

I wouldn't say water is naturally cooler than air. What I would say is that water has a higher heat capacity than air. This means it takes more energy to affect the same increase in temperature and conversely it takes water longer to cool down than air. You can see this at night near bodies of water when the sea breeze changes to a land breeze as the land becomes cooler than the water - water temperatures tend to be stable across diurnal cycles.

I would also contest the statement that water cools the air. Water does both heating and cooling. When water evaporates into air, the air cools. However take a look at any thunderstorm you see -- that is water causing heating as it condenses and freezes. Water on the surface can also contribute to both heating and cooling. During the day the cool water surface will have a heat flux that cools the air while at night the opposite may be true. This depends on the air temperature and the SST.

Now on to your question, yes, there would still be wind if there were no water. The energy that drives the wind is differential solar heating at the earths surface. Variations in the surface topography and the shape of the earth mean that the solar flux isn't constant across the earth. As long as we have a sun we will have surface pressure differences and wind. Without water we would also see a stronger equator-to-pole temperature gradient (look at temperature variations right now on continents versus open ocean). This would result in stronger winds that we see today.

Answer 2

A necessary (but not sufficient) condition for hurricanes to form on Earth if there was no water (dry hurricanes) is that the lapse rate would have to exceed the dry adiabatic by a large enough margin over a sufficiently large region of the troposphere. By contrast, with water vapor, this necessary (but not sufficient) condition is mitigated to a lapse rate merely exceeding the moist adiabatic by a large enough margin over a sufficiently large region of the troposphere. Dry hurricanes have been simulated on computers. While the laws of physics don't forbid dry hurricanes in principle, in practice it would be at least very difficult and maybe impossible to attain the the required steep lapse rate over a sufficiently large region of the troposphere, even with no solar energy expended in evaporation on a dry Earth.

Answer 3

If the world was uniform but still spinning, the difference between night and day would be enough to create a wind. Add mountains etc, plenty of temperature differences to create wind.