Winds, water density, and tides all drive ocean currents. Coastal and sea floor features influence their location, direction, and speed. Earth’s rotation results in the Coriolis Effect which also influences ocean currents. Large-scale, surface ocean currents are driven by global wind systems that are fueled by energy from the sun.
Full Answer
How does the wind affect ocean currents?
Wind can give more power to ocean currents. If the wind is strong enough, it can cause the ocean currents to be stronger and also move faster. Since the oceans currents have gained more power from the wind, they also have a high potential on causing significant impacts on human lives. The impacts could be devastating or useful.
What are the winds the most affect the oceans currents?
Periodic changes in the strong winds that whip around the Arctic, 15 to 30 miles (24 to 48 kilometers) above the ground, influence currents deep within the ocean and affect the global climate, according to a new study published yesterday (Sept. 23) in the journal Nature Geoscience.
What is the general direction of wind and ocean currents?
This rotation causes both the wind and ocean currents to move from east to west. Thus, the wind movement and ocean currents in the northern hemisphere goes clockwise and counter clockwise in the southern hemisphere. In what direction do global winds and currents flow south of the equator?
How does wind move ocean currents?
When wind blows over the ocean around these pressure centers, surface waves are generated by transferring some of the wind's energy, in the form of momentum, from the air to the water. This constant push on the surface of the ocean is the force that forms the surface currents. Basic currents off the coasts of the continents.
What is ocean current?
Ocean Currents. Encyclopedic Entry. Vocabulary. Ocean water is constantly moving, and not only in the form of waves and tides. Ocean currents flow like vast rivers, sweeping along predictable paths. Some ocean currents flow at the surface; others flow deep within water. Some currents flow for short distances; others cross entire ocean basins ...
Why are ocean currents important?
Ocean currents are also critically important to sea life. They carry nutrients and food to organisms that live permanently attached in one place, and carry reproductive cells and ocean life to new places. Rivers flow because of gravity.
How do tides affect ocean currents?
Tides contribute to coastal currents that travel short distances. Major surface ocean currents in the open ocean, however, are set in motion by the wind, which drags on the surface of the water as it blows. The water starts flowing in the same direction as the wind. But currents do not simply track the wind.
How long does it take for a conveyor belt to move water around the globe?
These currents circulate around the globe in a thousand-year cycle.
What causes deep ocean currents?
In contrast to wind-driven surface currents, deep-ocean currents are caused by differences in water density. The process that creates deep currents is called thermohaline circulation —“thermo” referring to temperature and “haline” to saltiness.
What forces pull water with them?
The winds pull surface water with them, creating currents. As these currents flow westward, the Coriolis effect —a force that results from the rotation of the Earth—deflects them. The currents then bend to the right, heading north.
Which direction do storms swirl?
the result of Earth's rotation on weather patterns and ocean currents. The Coriolis effect makes storms swirl clockwise in the Southern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. steady, predictable flow of fluid within a larger body of that fluid.
What are the two main types of currents in the ocean?
There are two distinct current systems in the ocean—surface circulation, which stirs a relatively thin upper layer of the sea, and deep circulation , which sweeps along the deep-sea floor. Download image (jpg, 38.6 KB).
How are ocean currents driven?
Surface currents in the ocean are driven by global wind systems that are fueled by energy from the sun. Patterns of surface currents are determined by wind direction, Coriolis forces from the Earth’s rotation, and the position of landforms that interact with the currents. Surface wind-driven currents generate upwelling currents in conjunction with landforms, creating deepwater currents.
What causes deepwater currents?
Currents may also be caused by density differences in water masses due to temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline) variations via a process known as thermohaline circulation. These currents move water masses through ...
What causes turbidity in the ocean?
Earthquakes may also trigger rapid downslope movement of water-saturated sediments, creating strong turbidity currents.
