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The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. [8] In English, the term ocean also refers to any of the large bodies of water into which the world ocean is conventionally divided. [9] The following names describe five different areas of the ocean: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and Arctic.
Ongoing oceanographic research includes marine lifeforms, conservation, the marine environment, the chemistry of the ocean, the studying and modelling of climate dynamics, the air-sea boundary, weather patterns, ocean resources, renewable energy, waves and currents, and the design and development of new tools and technologies for investigating ...
The ocean contains 97% of Earth's water and is the primary component of Earth's hydrosphere and is thereby essential to life on Earth. The ocean influences climate and weather patterns, the carbon cycle, and the water cycle by acting as a huge heat reservoir. (Full article...) Waves in Pacifica, California. A sea is a large body of salt water.
Over time, the water returns to the ocean, to continue the water cycle. The ocean plays a key role in the water cycle. The ocean holds "97% of the total water on the planet; 78% of global precipitation occurs over the ocean, and it is the source of 86% of global evaporation". [2]
Nevertheless, and since ocean basins are interconnected, many oceanographers prefer to refer to one single ocean basin instead of multiple ones. Older references (e.g., Littlehales 1930) [ 4 ] consider the oceanic basins to be the complement to the continents , with erosion dominating the latter, and the sediments so derived ending up in the ...
The oceanic zone is typically defined as the area of the ocean lying beyond the continental shelf (e.g. the neritic zone), but operationally is often referred to as beginning where the water depths drop to below 200 metres (660 ft), seaward from the coast into the open ocean with its pelagic zone.
An ocean is a body of water that composes much of a planet's hydrosphere. [1] On Earth, an ocean is one of the major conventional divisions of the World Ocean. These are, in descending order by area, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern (Antarctic), and Arctic Oceans. [2] [3] The word "ocean" is often used interchangeably with "sea" in ...
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions.It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east.