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An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of seawater generated by a number of forces acting upon the water, including wind, the Coriolis effect, breaking waves, cabbeling, and temperature and salinity differences. [1] Depth contours, shoreline configurations, and interactions with other currents influence a current's direction and ...
Perspective view of the sea floor of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. The purple sea floor at the center of the view is the Puerto Rico Trench.. Roughly 97% of the planet's water is in its oceans, and the oceans are the source of the vast majority of water vapor that condenses in the atmosphere and falls as rain or snow on the continents.
This is the most common form of vertical migration. Organisms migrate on a daily basis through different depths in the water column. Migration usually occurs between shallow surface waters of the epipelagic zone and deeper mesopelagic zone of the ocean or hypolimnion zone of lakes. [2] There are three recognized types of diel vertical migration:
The earliest use of oscillating water columns was in whistling buoys. These buoys used the air pressure generated in the collecting chamber to power a PTO system that consisted of a whistle or foghorn. Rather than generating electricity, the PTO would generate sound, allowing the buoy to warn boats of dangerous water. J. M.
Open ocean wind circulation can lead to gyre-like structures of piled up sea surface water resulting in horizontal gradients of sea surface height. [1] This pile up of water causes the water to have a downward flow and suction, due to gravity and mass balance. Ekman pumping downward in the central ocean is a consequence of this convergence of ...
The Ekman spiral is an arrangement of ocean currents: the directions of horizontal current appear to twist as the depth changes. [1] The oceanic wind driven Ekman spiral is the result of a force balance created by a shear stress force, Coriolis force and the water drag. This force balance gives a resulting current of the water different from ...
Ocean dynamics define and describe the flow of water within the oceans. Ocean temperature and motion fields can be separated into three distinct layers: mixed (surface) layer, upper ocean (above the thermocline), and deep ocean. Ocean dynamics has traditionally been investigated by sampling from instruments in situ. [1]
The cyclonic winds cause a divergence in the surface water in the Ekman layer, that turn requires upwelling of deeper water to maintain continuity. [15] Artificial upwelling is produced by devices that use ocean wave energy or ocean thermal energy conversion to pump water to the surface. Ocean wind turbines are also known to produce upwellings ...