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Buoyancy-forced downwelling, often termed convection, is the deepening of a water parcel due to a change in the density of that parcel.Density changes in the surface ocean are primarily the result of evaporation, precipitation, heating, cooling, or the introduction and mixing of an alternate water or salinity source, such as river input or brine rejection.
Evidence has shown that eddy pumping-induced upwelling and downwelling may play a significant role in shaping the way that carbon is stored in the ocean. Despite the fact that research in this field is only developing recently, first results show that eddies contribute less than 5% of the total annual export of phytoplankton to the ocean interior.
Ocean stratification is the natural separation of an ocean's water into horizontal layers by density. This is generally stable stratification , because warm water floats on top of cold water, and heating is mostly from the sun, which reinforces that arrangement.
A rip tide, or riptide, is a strong offshore current that is caused by the tide pulling water through an inlet along a barrier beach, at a lagoon or inland marina where tide water flows steadily out to sea during ebb tide. It is a strong tidal flow of water within estuaries and other enclosed tidal areas. The riptides become the strongest where ...
The downwelling of water that occurs in subtropical gyres takes nutrients deeper in the ocean, removing them from surface waters. Organic particles can also be removed from surface waters through gravitational sinking, where the particle is too heavy to remain suspended in the water column. [ 39 ]
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 ...
Before they go to the International Space Station, NASA astronauts head the other direction -- to the bottom of the ocean. They dive down to Aquarius the world's only undersea
In words, this equation says that as a vertical column of water is squashed, it moves toward the Equator; as it is stretched, it moves toward the pole. Assuming, as did Sverdrup, that there is a level below which motion ceases, the vorticity equation can be integrated from this level to the base of the Ekman surface layer to obtain: