ripperoni
In cryogenic environments this is less of an issue because things are more sticky, but in a room temperature apparatus targeting ultra high vacuum this is troublesome or impossible.
Underlying is the question though, why does this equation apply to the earths wheather? There seem to be parallels in the quantum and "macro" model, like windings of electron and wheather currents. Maybe the right view to modeling the earth is about dynamics as much as it is about topoligical phenomenons. After all, topology is used for solving gravitational problems, too.
Then why can the earth can be treated as a topoligical insulator and what implications does this have? Can we learn something from it that can be applied to other wheather phenomenons? Or maybe even to the earths core?