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Coastal upwelling is the best known type of upwelling, and the most closely related to human activities as it supports some of the most productive fisheries in the world. Coastal upwelling will occur if the wind direction is parallel to the coastline and generates wind-driven currents.
In shallow coastal waters, the Ekman spiral is normally not fully formed and the wind events that cause upwelling episodes are typically rather short. This leads to many variations in the extent of upwelling, but the ideas are still generally applicable.
Coastal upwelling is the main factor contributing to the high biological productivity of the Humboldt current. [1] Upwelling within the current is not uniform across the entire system. Three notable upwelling subsystems are produced by this current:
Coastal upwelling often brings nutrient-rich water into eastern boundary current regions, ... These warming hotspots cause severe environmental and economic problems, ...
Upwelling behavior: One of the unique characteristics of the Somali Current is the presence of strong coastal upwelling - the only major instance of this happening at a western ocean boundary. Following Ekman transport and with the southwest monsoon blowing parallel to the Somali coastline, the upwelling direction is to the offshore during the ...
Coastal upwelling occurs when the wind stress is directed with the coast on its left (right) in the Northern (Southern) Hemisphere. If so, Ekman transport is directed away from the coast forcing waters from below to move upward. Well known coastal upwelling areas are the Canary Current, the Benguela Current, the California Current, the Humboldt ...
The winds drive surface water to the right of the wind flow, that is offshore, which draws water up from below to replace it. The upwelling further cools the already cool California Current. This is the mechanism that produces California's characteristic coastal fog and cool ocean waters. As a result, ocean surf temperatures are much colder ...
Thus, some water is rising, in what is known as upwelling. Its speeds are very slow even compared to the movement of the bottom water masses. It is therefore difficult to measure where upwelling occurs using current speeds, given all the other wind-driven processes going on in the surface ocean.