Our atmosphere and the rotating Earth

[Janus]

I estimate the top of the motionless puffy cloud to be four miles above me. For it to be moving in sync with me the top must be moving much faster than I am as we rotate. I moved 700 miles in the last hour and the top of the cloud moved much farther. The top of the cloud moved much farther and faster than the bottom of the cloud. How is this possible? What force acts on the top of the cloud to move it faster than the surface of the Earth as we rotate? Newtons law does not explain this.

If you moved 700 miles in one hour, then for your latitude, in that same hour the top of that cloud four miles above you, in order to stay directly above you, would have had to have moved 701 miles, or 1 mph faster than you. This is not what I would call "much faster".
As to what would cause this to happen, You have to consider the nature of the air around you. It is made up of countless particles which are individually moving at high speeds of ~100's of meters per sec or better than 1000 mph, which are constantly colliding with each other and other objects such as the ground itself. (air pressure is actually the net force of all these air molecules bouncing of surfaces.)

So even if we were to assume that you started with a rotating Earth and an atmosphere that did not rotate with it, collision between the ground and air would transfer ground motion to air molecules striking it. These will, in turn, transfer motion to other air molecules via collision. This process will quickly work its way up through the atmosphere until the the net angular speed of of both the Earth and atmosphere match. This dragging process will be greatly helped by the fact that the Earth is not smooth but is covered with mountain ranges etc.

The reason we get winds at all is due to the uneven heating of the Earth's surface by the Sun. Warm spots create updrafts which draws air in from cooler areas to replace the rising air. For example, bodies of water tend to be cooler that land masses. So generally speaking, you get winds blowing off of oceans heading inland.( Something I'm well familiar with. I live in the Pacific Northwest about 100 miles inland. Many a time, we, on a hot summer day, have taken a trip to the coast, and as the day wore on, and the Sun heated the inland areas more, the wind off the ocean grew more intense as it fed the rising warm air inland.)

Include the fact only half the surface is being lit at anyone time and different latitudes receive the Sun at varying angles, plus the surface irregularities alluded to above, and wind patterns can be quite complex.

 

[sophiecentaur]

It is no more surprising that the atmosphere follows the Earth's surface than the air in a closed car (fan off) doesn't blow in your face. In neither case is there any "drag force" to keep the air from going at the same speed as the ground below.
Note that the Bernoulli effect is present because of the Earth's spherical shape. It causes moving air to follow a curved path which it wouldn't if the Earth's surface was cylindrical. Many features of the weather are due to the Bernoulli effect. (Google it to find some interesting things)