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With an area of 37 million square kilometres, it makes up approximately 10% of the Earth's ocean surface. [3] The gyre , as with Earth's other four gyres, contains an area with elevated concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge , and other debris known as the South Pacific garbage patch .
This occurs because the Earth is rotating. The rotation of the earth results in a "force" being felt by the water moving from the high to the low, known as Coriolis force . The Coriolis force acts at right angles to the flow, and when it balances the pressure gradient force, the resulting flow is known as geostrophic.
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]
Subtropical gyres make up 40% of the Earth’s surface and play critical roles in carbon fixation and nutrient cycling. [1] This particular gyre covers most of the Pacific Ocean and comprises four prevailing ocean currents: the North Pacific Current to the north, the California Current to the east, the North Equatorial Current to the south, and ...
The Subtropical Countercurrent is a shallow area of this "C"; at only about 250 dbar under the surface, circulation is a simpler closed, anticyclonic gyre. Narrow east-west frontal zones that cross the Pacific are less than 100 km wide.
The Indian Ocean gyre is composed of two major currents: the South Equatorial Current, and the West Australian Current. Normally moving counter-clockwise, in the winter the Indian Ocean gyre reverses direction due to the seasonal winds of the South Asian Monsoon. In the summer, the land is warmer than the ocean, so surface winds blow from the ...
The change in salinity is the same as adding 18 mm of freshwater to the surface of the gyre. [5] The southern area of the Ross Gyre has the strongest changes in salinity recorded. [5] As the Ross Gyre is fairly remote, the biogeochemistry of this region is relatively under sampled.
Since the oceans account for 71% of the Earth's surface area, 86% of evaporation (E) and 78% of precipitation (P) occur over the ocean, the oceanic freshwater fluxes represent a large part of the world's freshwater fluxes. [2] There are five major freshwater fluxes into and out of the ocean, namely: Precipitation; Evaporation; Riverine discharge