About 1*1020J of energy was consumed in the United States in 2005. What is the ratio of the kinetic energy of the air that passes toward the equator each second and the energy consumed in the United States each second?

This is part of a problem and with this part you can calculate r only what the energy consumed in the US each second is.

You only need to divide the amount of energy, 1*10^20J by the number of seconds in a year.

The number of seconds in a year is = 1 year * 365 day/year * 24h/day * 3600s/h = 31,536,000 s

Then the energy consumed each second is: 1 * 10^20 joule / 31,536,000s = 3,170,979,198,376.46 joule / s.≈ 3.17 * 10^12 joule / s

The kinetic energy of the air that passes toward the equator each second needs more information.

The missing part is the mass of air that passes across the equator and its speed. Those data are:

Mass of the air that passes through the equator: 2*10^11 kg

Average speed of that air: 1.5 m/s

Kintetic energy per second, KE / s = [1/2] m*v^2 = [1/2] ([2.0*10^11/s] * [1.5m/s]^2 = 2.25 * 10^11 joule / s

Now you can find the ratio of the KE of the air to the energy consumed in the US each second = [2.25*10^11 joule/s] / [ 3.17*10^12 joule/s] = 0.71

Answer: 0.71