Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Thermohaline circulation (THC) is a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes. [1] [2] The adjective thermohaline derives from thermo-referring to temperature and -haline referring to salt content, factors which together determine the density of sea water.
Hydrothermal circulation in the oceans is the passage of the water through mid-oceanic ridge systems.. The term includes both the circulation of the well-known, high-temperature vent waters near the ridge crests, and the much-lower-temperature, diffuse flow of water through sediments and buried basalts further from the ridge crests. [3]
Plot of temperature and salinity in the Arctic Ocean at 85,18 north and 117,28 east dated Jan. 1st 2010. [4] In the graphical representation, three layers can be discerned: About 50 m (160 ft) of low salinity water "swimming" on top of the ocean. The temperature is −1.8 °C (28.8 °F), which is very near to the freezing point.
The majority of ocean heat gain occurs in the Southern Ocean. For example, between the 1950s and the 1980s, the temperature of the Antarctic Southern Ocean rose by 0.17 °C (0.31 °F), nearly twice the rate of the global ocean. [38] The warming rate varies with depth. The upper ocean (above 700 m) is warming the fastest.
The extent of the ocean surface down into the ocean is influenced by the amount of mixing that takes place between the surface water and the deeper water. This depends on the temperature: in the tropics the warm surface layer of about 100 m is quite stable and does not mix much with deeper water, while near the poles winter cooling and storms makes the surface layer denser and it mixes to ...
Normally, relatively warm, less-saline water stays on the ocean's surface while deep layers are colder, denser and more-saline, in what is known as ocean stratification. [19] Deep water eventually gains heat and/or loses salinity in an exchange with the mixed ocean layer, and becomes less dense and rises towards the surface.
The total flux of groundwater to the ocean can be divided into three different fluxes: fresh submarine groundwater discharge, near-shore terrestrial groundwater discharge and recirculated sea water. The contribution of fresh groundwater accounts for less than 1% of the total freshwater input into the ocean and is therefore negligible on a ...
The dependence on pressure is not significant, since seawater is almost perfectly incompressible. [3] A change in the temperature of the water impacts on the distance between water parcels directly. [clarification needed] When the temperature of the water increases, the distance between water parcels will increase and hence the density will ...