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Winds drive ocean currents in the upper 100 meters of the ocean's surface. However, ocean currents also flow thousands of meters below the surface. These deep-ocean currents are driven by differences in the water's density, which is controlled by temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline). This process is known as thermohaline circulation.
In recent decades, the ocean has acted as a sink for anthropogenic CO 2, absorbing around a quarter of the CO 2 produced by humans through the burning of fossil fuels and land use changes. [9] By doing so, the ocean has acted as a buffer, somewhat slowing the rise in atmospheric CO 2 levels.
Lakes are net emitters of methane, and organic and inorganic carbon (dissolved and particulate) flow into the ocean through freshwater systems. In the ocean, methane can be released from thawing subsea permafrost, and CO 2 is absorbed due to an undersaturation of CO 2 in the water compared with the atmosphere. In addition, multiple fluxes are ...
The flow of energy in an ecosystem is an open system; the Sun constantly gives the planet energy in the form of light while it is eventually used and lost in the form of heat throughout the trophic levels of a food web. Carbon is used to make carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, the major sources of food energy. These compounds are oxidized to ...
The ocean biological pump is the ocean's biologically driven sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere and land runoff to the deep ocean interior and seafloor sediments. [79] The biological pump is not so much the result of a single process, but rather the sum of a number of processes each of which can influence biological pumping.
Those currents comprise half of the global thermohaline circulation that includes the flow of major ocean currents, the other half being the Southern Ocean overturning circulation. [2] The AMOC is composed of a northward flow of warm, more saline water in the Atlantic's upper layers and a southward, return flow of cold, salty, deep water.
This water sinks down and brings the carbon into the deeper ocean levels, where it can stay for anywhere between decades and several centuries. [2] Ocean circulation events cause this process to be variable. For example, during El Nino events there is less deep ocean upwelling, leading to lower outgassing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. [18]
Ocean currents move both horizontally, on scales that can span entire oceans, as well as vertically, with vertical currents (upwelling and downwelling) playing an important role in the movement of nutrients and gases, such as carbon dioxide, between the surface and the deep ocean. Ocean currents flow for great distances and together they create ...