Not sure if it was in the article or not but I think the Hairy Ball theorem from Topology would be important. Since earth is a sphere the wind can't blow all in the same direction. Some currents must oppose others. In a torus the wind could start blowing in one direction and stay that way forever.
That's not what the Hairy Ball Theorem (HBT) says, the HBT says that there must be a point on a sphere where a continuous vector field is zero. It doesn't say they can't be pointing in the same direction except that point.
this link http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem
talks about the application to the torus. It states that it is possible to completely comb the hair on a doughnut. That is the point I was trying to make earlier. I think it does imply that the wind could start blowing in the same direction if we lived on a torus. I think it would be the same if we lived inside like in science fiction movies or if we lived on the surface with a normal atmosphere.
> "there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on even dimensional n-spheres. For the ordinary sphere, or 2‑sphere, if f is a continuous function that assigns a vector in R3 to every point p on a sphere such that f(p) is always tangent to the sphere at p, then there is at least one p such that f(p) = 0"
Which means they can all blow in a continuous path except for at least one point, so the wind at every point but 2 could be blowing east on a sphere.
Yes, but the velocity must go to zero as you approach the poles. I took the OP to mean "with the same velocity", not "in closed loops". Obviously wind must blow in closed loops, since there are no sources or sinks of air.
