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The thermohaline circulation is sometimes called the ocean conveyor belt, the great ocean conveyor, or the global conveyor belt, coined by climate scientist Wallace Smith Broecker. [5] [6] It is also referred to as the meridional overturning circulation, or MOC. This name is used because not every circulation pattern caused by temperature and ...
The animation also shows another feature of the global ocean circulation: the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The region around latitude 60 south is the the only part of the Earth where the ocean can flow all the way around the world with no land in the way. As a result, both the surface and deep waters flow from west to east around Antarctica.
AMOC in relation to the global thermohaline circulation . The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the main current system in the Atlantic Ocean [1]: 2238 and is also part of the global thermohaline circulation, which connects the world's oceans with a single "conveyor belt" of continuous water exchange. [18]
The conveyor belt is also a vital component of the global ocean nutrient and carbon dioxide cycles. Warm surface waters are depleted of nutrients and carbon dioxide, but they are enriched again as they travel through the conveyor belt as deep or bottom layers. The base of the world's food chain depends on the cool, nutrient-rich waters that ...
Ocean currents flow for great distances and together they create the global conveyor belt, which plays a dominant role in determining the climate of many of Earth's regions. More specifically, ocean currents influence the temperature of the regions through which they travel.
Buoyancy-forced downwelling, often termed convection, is the deepening of a water parcel due to a change in the density of that parcel.Density changes in the surface ocean are primarily the result of evaporation, precipitation, heating, cooling, or the introduction and mixing of an alternate water or salinity source, such as river input or brine rejection.
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]
Surface currents only affect the top few hundred metres of the sea, but there are also large-scale flows in the ocean depths caused by the movement of deep water masses. A main deep ocean current flows through all the world's oceans and is known as the thermohaline circulation or global conveyor belt.