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The mesopelagic zone occupies about 60% of the planet's surface and about 20% of the ocean's volume, amounting to a large part of the total biosphere. [2] It hosts a diverse biological community that includes bristlemouths , blobfish , bioluminescent jellyfish , giant squid , and a myriad of other unique organisms adapted to live in a low-light ...
The Pacific Ocean cell plays a particularly important role in Earth's weather. This entirely ocean-based cell comes about as the result of a marked difference in the surface temperatures of the western and eastern Pacific. Under ordinary circumstances, the western Pacific waters are warm, and the eastern waters are cool.
The atmosphere is the least understood biome on Earth despite its critical role as a microbial transport medium. [2] Recent studies have shown microorganisms are ubiquitous in the atmosphere and reach concentration up to 10 6 microbial cells per cubic metre (28,000/cu ft) [3] and that they might be metabolically active.
The tiny (0.6 μm) marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, discovered in 1986, forms today an important part of the base of the ocean food chain and accounts for much of the photosynthesis of the open ocean [84] and an estimated 20% of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. [85]
The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, [1] [note 4] comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. [5] With a size of 21,960,000 km 2 (8,480,000 sq mi), it is the second-smallest of the five principal oceanic divisions, smaller than the Pacific ...
Simulations of the Martian atmosphere suggest that a Hadley circulation is also present in Mars' atmosphere, exhibiting a stronger seasonality compared to Earth's Hadley circulation. [135] This greater seasonality results from diminished thermal inertia resulting from the lack of an ocean and the planet's thinner atmosphere.
The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. [8] In English, the term ocean also refers to any of the large bodies of water into which the world ocean is conventionally divided. [9] The following names describe five different areas of the ocean: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and Arctic.
As the blooms die and sink, the carbon can be stored in sediments for thousands of years. This natural carbon sink is estimated to remove 3.5 million tonnes from the ocean each year. 3.5 million tonnes of carbon taken from the ocean and atmosphere is equivalent to 12.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. [17]