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An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of seawater generated by a number of forces acting upon the water, including wind, the Coriolis effect, breaking waves, cabbeling, and temperature and salinity differences. [1] Depth contours, shoreline configurations, and interactions with other currents influence a current's direction and ...
Winds drive ocean currents in the upper 100 meters of the ocean's surface. However, ocean currents also flow thousands of meters below the surface. These deep-ocean currents are driven by differences in the water's density, which is controlled by temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline). This process is known as thermohaline circulation.
Marine currents can carry large amounts of water, largely driven by the tides, which are a consequence of the gravitational effects of the planetary motion of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. Augmented flow velocities can be found where the underwater topography in straits between islands and the mainland or in shallows around headlands plays a major role in enhancing the flow velocities ...
A vital system of Atlantic Ocean currents that influences weather across the world could collapse as soon as the late 2030s, scientists have suggested in a new study — a planetary-scale disaster ...
A system of ocean currents that transports heat northward across the North Atlantic could collapse by mid-century, according to a new study, and scientists have said before that such a collapse ...
A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse with devastating implications for sea level rise global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some ...
A gyre is a circular ocean current formed by the Earth's wind patterns and the forces created by the rotation of the planet. [33] There are five main ocean gyres: the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres, the North and South Atlantic Subtropical Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre. There are significant garbage patches in each of ...
Ocean stratification is the natural separation of an ocean's water into horizontal layers by density. This is generally stable stratification , because warm water floats on top of cold water, and heating is mostly from the sun, which reinforces that arrangement.