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Knowledge of surface ocean currents is essential in reducing costs of shipping, since traveling with them reduces fuel costs. In 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 ...
Ocean currents are important in moving fresh and saline waters around and in keeping a balance. Evaporation causes the water to become more saline, and hence denser. Precipitation has the opposite effect, since it decreases the density of the surface water.
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 ...
A summary of the path of the thermohaline circulation. Blue paths represent deep-water currents, while red paths represent surface currents. Thermohaline circulation. Thermohaline circulation (THC) is a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes.
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 ...
A subsurface ocean current is an oceanic current that runs beneath surface currents. [1] Examples include the Equatorial Undercurrents of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, the California Undercurrent, [ 2 ] and the Agulhas Undercurrent, [ 3 ] the deep thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic, and bottom gravity currents near Antarctica.
The movement of Alaskan and northern Pacific ocean currents southward down the west coast results in much cooler ocean temperatures than at comparable latitudes on the east coast of the United States, where ocean currents come from the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic. The cooler ocean current along the west coast also makes summer temperatures ...
A geostrophic current is an oceanic current in which the pressure gradient force is balanced by the Coriolis effect. The direction of geostrophic flow is parallel to the isobars , with the high pressure to the right of the flow in the Northern Hemisphere , and the high pressure to the left in the Southern Hemisphere .