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51-517: One sverdrup is about five times what is carried by the world's largest river, the Amazon. In the context of ocean currents , a volume of one million cubic meters may be imagined as a "slice" of ocean with dimensions 1  km × 1 km × 1 m (width × length × thickness). At this scale, these units can be more easily compared in terms of width of the current (several km), depth (hundreds of meters), and current speed (as meters per second ). Thus,

102-543: A volume flow rate of 1,000,000 m (35,000,000 cu ft) per second. There are two main types of currents, surface currents and deep water currents. Generally surface currents are driven by wind systems and deep water currents are driven by differences in water density due to variations in water temperature and salinity . Surface oceanic currents are driven by wind currents, the large scale prevailing winds drive major persistent ocean currents, and seasonal or occasional winds drive currents of similar persistence to

153-399: A decisive role in influencing the climates of regions through which they flow. Ocean currents are important in the study of marine debris . Upwellings and cold ocean water currents flowing from polar and sub-polar regions bring in nutrients that support plankton growth, which are crucial prey items for several key species in marine ecosystems . Ocean currents are also important in

204-463: A global ocean model. These trajectories are of particles that move only on the surface of the ocean. The model outcome gives the probability of a particle at a certain grid point to end up somewhere else on the ocean's surface. With the model outcome a matrix can be created from which the Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues are taken. These Eigenvectors show regions of attraction, aka regions where things on

255-526: A hypothetical current 50 km wide, 500 m (0.5 km) deep, and moving at 2 m/s would be transporting 50 Sv of water. The sverdrup is distinct from the SI sievert unit or the non-SI svedberg unit. All three use the same symbol, but they are not related. The sverdrup is named in honor of the Norwegian oceanographer, meteorologist and polar explorer Harald Ulrik Sverdrup (1888–1957), who wrote

306-562: A much colder northern Europe and greater sea-level rise along the U.S. East Coast." In addition to water surface temperatures, the wind systems are a crucial determinant of ocean currents. Wind wave systems influence oceanic heat exchange, the condition of the sea surface, and can alter ocean currents. In the North Atlantic, equatorial Pacific, and Southern Ocean, increased wind speeds as well as significant wave heights have been attributed to climate change and natural processes combined. In

357-518: A number of forces acting upon the water, including wind, the Coriolis effect , breaking waves , cabbeling , and temperature and salinity differences. Depth contours , shoreline configurations, and interactions with other currents influence a current's direction and strength. 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

408-500: A particle on the ocean surface in a certain region is more likely to stay in the same region than to pass over to a different one. Depending on the chemical composition and the physical state, the Earth can be divided into three major components:  the mantle , the core , and the crust . The crust is referred to as the outside layer of the Earth. It is made of solid rock, mostly basalt and granite . The crust that lies below sea level

459-453: A result, influence the biological composition of oceans. Due to the patchiness of the natural ecological world, dispersal is a species survival mechanism for various organisms. With strengthened boundary currents moving toward the poles, it is expected that some marine species will be redirected to the poles and greater depths. The strengthening or weakening of typical dispersal pathways by increased temperatures are expected to not only impact

510-418: A significant role in influencing climate, and shifts in climate in turn impact ocean currents. Over the last century, reconstructed sea surface temperature data reveal that western boundary currents are heating at double the rate of the global average. These observations indicate that the western boundary currents are likely intensifying due to this change in temperature, and may continue to grow stronger in

561-541: Is affected not only by the volume of the ocean basin, but also by the volume of water in them. Factors that influence the volume of the ocean basins are: The Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean are good examples of active, growing oceanic basins, whereas the Mediterranean Sea is shrinking. The Pacific Ocean is also an active, shrinking oceanic basin, even though it has both spreading ridge and oceanic trenches. Perhaps

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612-425: Is also known as the ocean's conveyor belt. Where significant vertical movement of ocean currents is observed, this is known as upwelling and downwelling . The adjective thermohaline derives from thermo- referring to temperature and -haline referring to salt content , factors which together determine the density of seawater. The thermohaline circulation is a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that

663-524: Is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes . Wind -driven surface currents (such as the Gulf Stream ) travel polewards from the equatorial Atlantic Ocean , cooling en route, and eventually sinking at high latitudes (forming North Atlantic Deep Water ). This dense water then flows into the ocean basins . While the bulk of it upwells in the Southern Ocean ,

714-532: Is known as the oceanic crust , while on land it is known as the continental crust . The former is thinner and is composed of relatively dense basalt, while the latter is less dense and mainly composed of granite. The lithosphere is composed of the crust (oceanic and continental) and the uppermost part of the mantle. The lithosphere is broken into sections called plates . Tectonic plates move very slowly (5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 inches) per year) relative to each other and interact along their boundaries. This movement

765-584: Is responsible for most of the Earth's seismic and volcanic activity. Depending on how the plates interact with each other, there are three types of boundaries. The Earth's deepest trench is the Mariana Trench which extends for about 2500 km (1600 miles) across the seabed. It is near the Mariana Islands , a volcanic archipelago in the West Pacific. Its deepest point is 10994 m (nearly 7 miles) below

816-484: Is set at the equator . The Antarctic or Southern Ocean, which reaches from 60° south to Antarctica had been omitted until 2000, but is now also recognized by the International Hydrographic Office. Nevertheless, and since ocean basins are interconnected, many oceanographers prefer to refer to one single ocean basin instead of multiple ones.   Older references (e.g., Littlehales 1930) consider

867-477: The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is in danger of collapsing due to climate change, which would have extreme impacts on the climate of northern Europe and more widely, although this topic is controversial and remains an active area of research. The "State of the cryosphere" report, dedicates significant space to AMOC, saying it may be enroute to collapse because of ice melt and water warming. In

918-820: The Baltic Sea (with three subdivisions), the North Sea , the Greenland Sea , the Norwegian Sea , the Laptev Sea , the Gulf of Mexico , the South China Sea , and many more. The limits were set for convenience of compiling sailing directions but had no geographical or physical ground and to this day have no political significance. For instance, the line between the North and South Atlantic

969-496: The East Australian Current , global warming has also been accredited to increased wind stress curl , which intensifies these currents, and may even indirectly increase sea levels, due to the additional warming created by stronger currents. As ocean circulation changes due to climate, typical distribution patterns are also changing. The dispersal patterns of marine organisms depend on oceanographic conditions, which as

1020-465: The Florida Current to a maximum of 150 Sv south of Newfoundland at 55° W longitude . The Antarctic Circumpolar Current , at approximately 125 Sv , is the largest ocean current. The entire global input of fresh water from rivers to the ocean is approximately 1.2 Sv . Ocean current An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of seawater generated by

1071-589: The Humboldt Current . The largest ocean current is the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), a wind-driven current which flows clockwise uninterrupted around Antarctica. The ACC connects all the ocean basins together, and also provides a link between the atmosphere and the deep ocean due to the way water upwells and downwells on either side of it. Ocean currents are patterns of water movement that influence climate zones and weather patterns around

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1122-437: The seasons ; this is most notable in equatorial currents. Deep ocean basins generally have a non-symmetric surface current, in that the eastern equator-ward flowing branch is broad and diffuse whereas the pole-ward flowing western boundary current is relatively narrow. Large scale currents are driven by gradients in water density , which in turn depend on variations in temperature and salinity. This thermohaline circulation

1173-464: The 1942 volume The Oceans, Their Physics, Chemistry, and General Biology together with Martin W. Johnson and Richard H. Fleming. In the 1950s and early 1960s both Soviet and North American scientists contemplated the damming of the Bering Strait , thus enabling temperate Atlantic water to heat up the cold Arctic Sea and, the theory went, making Siberia and northern Canada more habitable. As part of

1224-792: The Atlantic and Arctic basins. The Atlantic Basin began to form around 180 million years ago, when the continent Laurasia (North America and Eurasia ) started to drift away from Africa and South America. The Pacific plate grew, and subduction led to a shrinking of its bordering plates. The Pacific plate continues to move northward. Around 130 million years ago the South Atlantic started to form, as South America and Africa started to separate. At around this time India and Madagascar rifted northwards, away from Australia and Antarctica, creating seafloor around Western Australia and East Antarctica. When Madagascar and India separated between 90 and 80 million years ago,

1275-460: The Earth's surface, and together they contain almost 97% of all water on the planet. They have an average depth of almost 4 km (about 2.5 miles). "Limits of Oceans and Seas" , published by the International Hydrographic Office in 1953, is a document that defined the ocean's basins as they are largely known today. The main ocean basins are the ones named in the previous section. These main basins are divided into smaller parts. Some examples are:

1326-605: The Mariana Islands. It is located far away from oceanic spreading centers, where oceanic crust is constantly created or destroyed. The oldest crust is estimated to be only around 200 million years old, compared to the age of Earth which is 4.6 billion years. 200 million years ago nearly all land mass was one large continent called Pangea , which started to split up. During the splitting process of Pangea, some ocean basins shrunk, such as the Pacific, while others were created, such as

1377-595: The North American team, Canadian oceanographer Maxwell Dunbar found it "very cumbersome" to repeatedly reference millions of cubic meters per second. He casually suggested that as a new unit of water flow, "the inflow through Bering Strait is one sverdrup". At the Arctic Basin Symposium in October 1962, the unit came into general usage. The water transport in the Gulf Stream gradually increases from 30 Sv in

1428-407: The circulation has a large impact on the climate of the Earth. The thermohaline circulation is sometimes called the ocean conveyor belt, the great ocean conveyor, or the global conveyor belt. On occasion, it is imprecisely used to refer to the meridional overturning circulation , (MOC). Since the 2000s an international program called Argo has been mapping the temperature and salinity structure of

1479-544: The cost and emissions of shipping vessels. Ocean currents can also impact the fishing industry , examples of this include the Tsugaru , Oyashio and Kuroshio currents all of which influence the western North Pacific temperature, which has been shown to be a habitat predictor for the Skipjack tuna . It has also been shown that it is not just local currents that can affect a country's economy, but neighboring currents can influence

1530-564: The dispersal and distribution of many organisms, inclusing those with pelagic egg or larval stages. An example is the life-cycle of the European Eel . Terrestrial species, for example tortoises and lizards, can be carried on floating debris by currents to colonise new terrestrial areas and islands . The continued rise of atmospheric temperatures is anticipated to have various effects on the strength of surface ocean currents, wind-driven circulation and dispersal patterns. Ocean currents play

1581-572: The individual ocean basins has fluctuated in the past due to, amongst other, tectonic plate movements. Therefore, an oceanic basin can be actively changing size and/or depth or can be relatively inactive. The elements of an active and growing oceanic basin include an elevated mid-ocean ridge , flanking abyssal hills leading down to abyssal plains and an oceanic trench . Changes in biodiversity, floodings and other climate variations are linked to sea-level, and are reconstructed with different models and observations (e.g., age of oceanic crust). Sea level

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1632-407: The moon in the form of tides , and by the effects of variations in water density. Ocean dynamics define and describe the motion 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 currents are measured in units of sverdrup (Sv) , where 1 Sv is equivalent to

1683-456: 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 the global conveyor belt , which plays a dominant role in determining the climate of many of Earth's regions. More specifically, ocean currents influence the temperature of the regions through which they travel. For example, warm currents traveling along more temperate coasts increase

1734-462: The near future. There is evidence that surface warming due to anthropogenic climate change has accelerated upper ocean currents in 77% of the global ocean. Specifically, increased vertical stratification due to surface warming intensifies upper ocean currents, while changes in horizontal density gradients caused by differential warming across different ocean regions results in the acceleration of surface zonal currents . There are suggestions that

1785-509: The ocean is divided into basins following the continents distribution : the North and South Atlantic (together approximately 75 million km / 29 million mi ), North and South Pacific (together approximately 155 million km / 59 million mi ), Indian Ocean (68 million km / 26 million mi ) and Arctic Ocean (14 million km / 5.4 million mi ). Also recognized is the Southern Ocean (20 million km / 7 million mi ). All ocean basins collectively cover 71% of

1836-406: The ocean is very slow compared to horizonal flow and observing the deep ocean is difficult. Defining the ocean basins based on connectivity of the entire ocean (depth and width) is therefore not possible. Froyland et al. (2014) defined ocean basins based on surface connectivity. This is achieved by creating a Markov Chain model of the surface ocean dynamics using short term time trajectory data from

1887-515: The ocean with a fleet of automated platforms that float with the ocean currents. The information gathered will help explain the role the oceans play in the earth's climate. Ocean currents affect temperatures throughout the world. For example, the ocean current that brings warm water up the north Atlantic to northwest Europe also cumulatively and slowly blocks ice from forming along the seashores, which would also block ships from entering and exiting inland waterways and seaports, hence ocean currents play

1938-440: The oceanic basins to be the complement to the continents , with erosion dominating the latter, and the sediments so derived ending up in the ocean basins. This vision is supported by the fact that oceans lie lower than continents, so the former serve as sedimentary basins that collect sediment eroded from the continents, known as clastic sediments, as well as precipitation sediments. Ocean basins also serve as repositories for

1989-464: The oldest waters (with a transit time of around 1000 years) upwell in the North Pacific. Extensive mixing therefore takes place between the ocean basins, reducing differences between them and making the Earth's oceans a global system. On their journey, the water masses transport both energy (in the form of heat) and matter (solids, dissolved substances and gases) around the globe. As such, the state of

2040-575: The same latitude North America's weather was colder. A good example of this is the Agulhas Current (down along eastern Africa), which long prevented sailors from reaching India. In recent times, around-the-world sailing competitors make good use of surface currents to build and maintain speed. Ocean currents can also be used for marine power generation , with areas of Japan, Florida and Hawaii being considered for test projects. The utilization of currents today can still impact global trade, it can reduce

2091-450: The same time, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is also slowing down and is expected to lose 20% of it power by the year 2050, "with widespread impacts on ocean circulation and climate". UNESCO mentions that the report in the first time "notes a growing scientific consensus that melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, among other factors, may be slowing important ocean currents at both poles, with potentially dire consequences for

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2142-455: The skeletons of carbonate - and silica -secreting organisms such as coral reefs , diatoms , radiolarians , and foraminifera . More modern sources (e.g., Floyd 1991) regard the ocean basins more as basaltic plains, than as sedimentary depositories, since most sedimentation occurs on the continental shelves and not in the geologically defined ocean basins. The flow in the ocean is not uniform but varies with depth. Vertical circulation in

2193-646: The spreading ridges in the Indian Ocean were reorganized. The northernmost part of the Atlantic Ocean was also formed at this time when Europe and Greenland separated. About 60 million years ago a new rift and oceanic ridge formed between Greenland and Europe, separating them and initiating the formation of oceanic crust in the Norwegian Sea and the Eurasian Basin in the eastern Arctic Ocean. The area occupied by

2244-434: The surface of the ocean (plastic, biomass, water etc.) become trapped. One of these regions is for example the Atlantic garbage patch . With this approach the five main ocean basins are still the North and South Atlantic, North and South Pacific and the Arctic Ocean, but with different boundaries between the basins. These boundaries show the lines of very little surface connectivity between the different regions which means that

2295-488: The surface of the sea. The Earth's longest trench runs alongside the coast of Peru and Chile, reaching a depth of 8065 m (26460 feet) and extending for approximately 5900 km (3700 miles). It occurs where the oceanic Nazca plate slides under the continental South American plate and is associated with the upthrust and volcanic activity of the Andes. The oldest oceanic crust is in the far western equatorial Pacific, east of

2346-413: The survival of native marine species due to inability to replenish their meta populations but also may increase the prevalence of invasive species . In Japanese corals and macroalgae, the unusual dispersal pattern of organisms toward the poles may destabilize native species. Knowledge of surface ocean currents is essential in reducing costs of shipping, since traveling with them reduces fuel costs. In

2397-501: The temperature of the area by warming the sea breezes that blow over them. Perhaps the most striking example is the Gulf Stream , which, together with its extension the North Atlantic Drift , makes northwest Europe much more temperate for its high latitude than other areas at the same latitude. Another example is Lima, Peru , whose cooler subtropical climate contrasts with that of its surrounding tropical latitudes because of

2448-849: The viability of local fishing industries. Currents of the Arctic Ocean Currents of the Atlantic Ocean Currents of the Indian Ocean Currents of the Pacific Ocean Currents of the Southern Ocean Oceanic gyres Oceanic basin In  hydrology , an  oceanic basin  (or ocean basin ) is anywhere on Earth that is covered by  seawater . Geologically , most of the ocean basins are large  geologic basins  that are below sea level . Most commonly

2499-523: The wind powered sailing-ship era, knowledge of wind patterns and ocean currents was even more essential. Using ocean currents to help their ships into harbor and using currents such as the gulf stream to get back home. The lack of understanding of ocean currents during that time period is hypothesized to be one of the contributing factors to exploration failure. The Gulf Stream and the Canary current keep western European countries warmer and less variable, while at

2550-404: The winds that drive them, and the Coriolis effect plays a major role in their development. The Ekman spiral velocity distribution results in the currents flowing at an angle to the driving winds, and they develop typical clockwise spirals in the northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise rotation in the southern hemisphere . In addition, the areas of surface ocean currents move somewhat with

2601-401: The world. They are primarily driven by winds and by seawater density, although many other factors influence them – including the shape and configuration of the ocean basin they flow through. The two basic types of currents – surface and deep-water currents – help define the character and flow of ocean waters across the planet. Ocean currents are driven by the wind, by the gravitational pull of

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