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The ocean has an extraordinary ability of storing and transporting large amounts of heat, carbon and fresh water. [12] Even though approximately 70% of the Earth's surface consists of water, more than 75% of the water exchange between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere occurs over the oceans.
From shallow waters to the deep sea, the open ocean to rivers and lakes, numerous terrestrial and marine species depend on the surface ecosystem and the organisms found there. [1] The ocean's surface acts like a skin between the atmosphere above and the water below, and hosts an ecosystem unique to this environment.
The stratosphere is the second-lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. It lies above the troposphere and is separated from it by the tropopause. This layer extends from the top of the troposphere at roughly 12 km (7.5 mi; 39,000 ft) above Earth's surface to the stratopause at an altitude of about 50 to 55 km (31 to 34 mi; 164,000 to 180,000 ft).
The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere. This extends from the planetary surface to the bottom of the stratosphere. The troposphere contains 75–80% of the mass of the atmosphere, [9] and is the atmospheric layer wherein the weather occurs; the height of the troposphere varies between 17 km at the equator and 7.0 km at the poles.
The oceans' surface layer holds large amounts of dissolved organic carbon that is exchanged rapidly with the atmosphere. The deep layer's concentration of dissolved inorganic carbon is about 15 percent higher than that of the surface layer [79] and it remains there for much longer periods of time. [80]
A marine layer is an air mass that develops over the surface of a large body of water, such as an ocean or large lake, in the presence of a temperature inversion. The inversion itself is usually initiated by the cooling effect caused when cold water on the surface of the ocean interacts with a comparatively warm air mass. [1]
Above the barrier layer, the well mixed layer may be due to local precipitation exceeding evaporation (e.g. in the western Pacific), monsoon related river runoff (e.g. in the northern Indian Ocean), or advection of salty water subducted in the subtropics (found in all subtropical ocean gyres). Barrier layer formation in the subtropics is ...
Original subscript: Schematic of chemical and transport processes related to atmospheric composition. These processes link the atmosphere with other components of the Earth system, including the oceans, land, and terrestrial and marine plants and animals.