Thermal winds are a measure of the vertical wind shear.
They are derived from the horizontal gradient of temperature using the geostrophic wind hydrostatic equations and the equation of state. A wind field is defined from the geopotential height observations at two reference levels and temperature profiles over the area of interest. Thus the GOES soundings plus surface observations provide adequate information to determine the three dimensional distribution of thermal wind velocities. Thermal winds are provided with each profile. These are derived from objective analysis of the geopotential profiles calculated with each retrieval.