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With an area of 37 million square kilometres, it makes up approximately 10% of the Earth's ocean surface. [3] The gyre, as with Earth's other four gyres, contains an area with elevated concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge, and other debris known as the South Pacific garbage patch. [4]
The South Pacific Gyre, like its northern counterpart, is one of the largest ecosystems on Earth with an area that accounts for around 10% of the global ocean surface area. [20] Within this massive area is Point Nemo, the location on Earth that is farthest away from all continental landmass (2,688 km away from the closest land). [21]
The Subtropical Countercurrent is a shallow area of this "C"; at only about 250 dbar under the surface, circulation is a simpler closed, anticyclonic gyre. Narrow east-west frontal zones that cross the Pacific are less than 100 km wide.
This occurs because the Earth is rotating. The rotation of the earth results in a "force" being felt by the water moving from the high to the low, known as Coriolis force . The Coriolis force acts at right angles to the flow, and when it balances the pressure gradient force, the resulting flow is known as geostrophic.
Subtropical gyres make up 40% of the Earth’s surface and play critical roles in carbon fixation and nutrient cycling. [1] This particular gyre covers most of the Pacific Ocean and comprises four prevailing ocean currents: the North Pacific Current to the north, the California Current to the east, the North Equatorial Current to the south, and ...
View of the currents surrounding the gyre. The North Atlantic Gyre of the Atlantic Ocean is one of five great oceanic gyres.It is a circular ocean current, with offshoot eddies and sub-gyres, across the North Atlantic from the Intertropical Convergence Zone (calms or doldrums) to the part south of Iceland, and from the east coasts of North America to the west coasts of Europe and Africa.
Solar flares and coronal mass ejections tend to occur near sunspots, dark patches as big as Earth that are located near the most intense portions of the sun’s shifting magnetic field.
The Indian Ocean gyre is composed of two major currents: the South Equatorial Current, and the West Australian Current. Normally moving counter-clockwise, in the winter the Indian Ocean gyre reverses direction due to the seasonal winds of the South Asian Monsoon. In the summer, the land is warmer than the ocean, so surface winds blow from the ...