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A related feature is an area of warm water with an "eddy" or "Loop Current ring" that separates from the Loop Current, somewhat randomly every 3 to 17 months. [4] Swirling at 1.8 to 2 meters/second, these rings drift to the west at speeds of 2 to 5 kilometers/day and have a lifespan of up to a year before they bump into the coast of Texas or ...
While this explanation focuses on the motion of the ocean water, the phenomenon being described is in nature an interfacial wave, with mirroring processes happening on either side of the interface between two fluids: ocean water and air. At the simplest level, an internal wave can be thought of as an interfacial wave (Fig. 1, bottom) at the ...
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. A geostrophic current is an oceanic current in ...
Figure 2. Eigenvalue ε of wave modes of zonal wave number s = 1 vs. normalized frequency ν = ω/Ω where Ω = 7.27 × 10 −5 s −1 is the angular frequency of one solar day. Waves with positive (negative) frequencies propagate to the east (west). The horizontal dashed line is at ε c ≃ 11 and indicates the transition from internal to ...
Waves in the oceans can travel thousands of kilometers before reaching land. Wind waves on Earth range in size from small ripples to waves over 30 m (100 ft) high, being limited by wind speed, duration, fetch, and water depth. [1] When directly generated and affected by local wind, a wind wave system is called a wind sea.
Water is the medium of the oceans, the medium which carries all the substances and elements involved in the marine biogeochemical cycles. Water as found in nature almost always includes dissolved substances, so water has been described as the "universal solvent" for its ability to dissolve so many substances.
The most generally familiar sort of breaking wave is the breaking of water surface waves on a coastline. Wave breaking generally occurs where the amplitude reaches the point that the crest of the wave actually overturns. Certain other effects in fluid dynamics have also been termed "breaking waves", partly by analogy with water surface waves.
A Kelvin wave is a wave in the ocean, a large lake or the atmosphere that balances the Earth's Coriolis force against a topographic boundary such as a coastline, or a waveguide such as the equator. A feature of a Kelvin wave is that it is non-dispersive , i.e., the phase speed of the wave crests is equal to the group speed of the wave energy ...