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This gyre is characterized by a clockwise rotation of surface waters, driven by the combined influence of wind, the Earth's rotation, and the shape of the seafloor. The gyre plays a crucial role in the transport of heat, nutrients, and marine life in the Southern Ocean, affecting the distribution of sea ice and influencing regional climate ...
Similar to the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, the Kuroshio is a powerful western boundary current that transports warm equatorial water poleward and forms the western limb of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Off the East Coast of Japan, it merges with the Oyashio Current to form the North Pacific Current.
Open ocean wind circulation can lead to gyre-like structures of piled up sea surface water resulting in horizontal gradients of sea surface height. [1] This pile up of water causes the water to have a downward flow and suction, due to gravity and mass balance. Ekman pumping downward in the central ocean is a consequence of this convergence of ...
The oceanic regions within the South Pacific Gyre (SPG), and other subtropical gyres, are characterized by low primary productivity in the surface ocean; i.e. they are oligotrophic. The center of the SPG is the furthest oceanic province from a continent and contains the clearest ocean water on Earth [2] with ≥ 0.14 mg chlorophyll per m 3. [2]
A northern-hemisphere gyre in geostrophic balance. Paler water is less dense than dark water, but more dense than air; the outwards pressure gradient is balanced by the 90 degrees-right-of-flow coriolis force. The structure will eventually dissipate due to friction and mixing of water properties.
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.
The opposite is applicable when Ekman divergence is induced, leading to Ekman absorption (suction) and a subsequent, water column stretching and poleward return flow, a characteristic of sub-polar gyres. This return flow, as shown by Stommel, [1] occurs in a meridional current, concentrated near the western boundary of an ocean basin. To ...
Many of the ocean's largest currents circulate around warm, high-pressure areas called gyres. Though the circulation is not as significant as that in the air, the deflection caused by the Coriolis effect is what creates the spiralling pattern in these gyres. The spiralling wind pattern helps the hurricane form.