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Use of the term "cyclic" refers to the cycle in which the salt moves from sea to land and is then washed by rainwater back to the sea. The salt (and other solid matter) cannot evaporate as water does. Instead it leaves the ocean surface in fine droplets of drop impacts or bubble bursts. Wave-crests and other turbulence form foam.
Many physical processes over ocean surface generate sea salt aerosols. One common cause is the bursting of air bubbles, which are entrained by the wind stress during the whitecap formation. Another is tearing of drops from wave tops. [19] The total sea salt flux from the ocean to the atmosphere is about 3300 Tg (3.3 billion tonnes) per year. [20]
As seawater freezes in the polar ocean, salt brine concentrates are expelled from the sea ice, creating a downward flow of dense, extremely cold, saline water, with a lower freezing point than the surrounding water. When this plume comes into contact with the neighboring ocean water, its extremely low temperature causes ice to instantly form ...
Computer models of ocean circulation increasingly place most of the deep upwelling in the Southern Ocean, associated with the strong winds in the open latitudes between South America and Antarctica. [28] Direct estimates of the strength of the thermohaline circulation have also been made at 26.5°N in the North Atlantic, by the UK-US RAPID ...
The ocean contains 97% of Earth's water and is the primary component of Earth's hydrosphere and is thereby essential to life on Earth. The ocean influences climate and weather patterns, the carbon cycle, and the water cycle by acting as a huge heat reservoir. (Full article...) Waves in Pacifica, California. A sea is a large body of salt water.
Plot of temperature and salinity in the Arctic Ocean at 85,18 north and 117,28 east dated Jan. 1st 2010. [4] In the graphical representation, three layers can be discerned: About 50 m (160 ft) of low salinity water "swimming" on top of the ocean. The temperature is −1.8 °C (28.8 °F), which is very near to the freezing point.
Sea salt aerosol, which originally comes from sea spray, is one of the most widely distributed natural aerosols. Sea salt aerosols are characterized as non-light-absorbing, highly hygroscopic, and having coarse particle size. Some sea salt dominated aerosols could have a single scattering albedo as large as ~0.97. [1]
Ultimately, most of the CO 2 emitted by human activities will dissolve in the ocean, [4] however the rate at which the ocean will take it up in the future is less certain. In a study of carbon cycle up to the end of the 21st century, Cox et al. (2000) [ 5 ] predicted that the rate of CO 2 uptake will begin to saturate at a maximum rate at 5 ...