Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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. In the Earth's polar regions ocean water gets very cold, forming sea ice.
CaCO 3 is supersatured in the great majority of ocean surface waters and undersaturated at depth, [10] meaning the shells are more likely to dissolve as they sink to ocean depths. CaCO 3 can also be dissolved through metabolic dissolution (i.e. can be used as food and excreted) and thus deep ocean sediments have very little calcium carbonate. [16]
Water becomes less dense as its temperature increases and the distance between its molecules expands, but more dense as the salinity increases, since there is a larger mass of salts dissolved within that water. [15] Further, while fresh water is at its most dense at 4 °C, seawater only gets denser as it cools, up until it reaches the freezing ...
[27] [28] [29] Dissolved gas solubility is greater in cold water allowing for increased gas concentrations. [29] The Southern Ocean alone has been shown to be the most important high-latitude region controlling pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide by general circulation model simulations. Circulation of water into the Antarctic deep-water ...
Those currents comprise half of the global thermohaline circulation that includes the flow of major ocean currents, the other half being the Southern Ocean overturning circulation. [2] The AMOC is composed of a northward flow of warm, more saline water in the Atlantic's upper layers and a southward, return flow of cold, salty, deep water.
Ocean currents move both horizontally, on scales that can span entire oceans, as well as vertically, with vertical currents (upwelling and downwelling) playing an important role in the movement of nutrients and gases, such as carbon dioxide, between the surface and the deep ocean. Ocean currents flow for great distances and together they create ...
Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is estimated to range from 20-70% of the carbon content of the oceans, being higher near river outlets and lower in the open ocean. [5] DOM can be recycled and put back into the food web through a process called microbial loop which is essential for nutrient cycling and supporting primary productivity. [ 6 ]
Sea water can prevent desiccation although it is much saltier than fresh water. For oceanic organism, not like terrestrial plants and animals, water is never a problem. Sea water carries oxygen and nutrients to oceanic organisms, which allow them to be planktonic or settled. The dissolved minerals and oxygen flow with currents/circulations.