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Boundary Current
Boundary currents are ocean currents with dynamics determined by the presence of a coastline, and fall into two distinct categories: western boundary currents and eastern boundary currents. Eastern boundary currents Eastern boundary currents are relatively shallow, broad and slow-flowing. They are found on the eastern side of oceanic basins (adjacent to the western coasts of continents). Subtropical eastern boundary currents flow equatorward, transporting cold water from higher latitudes to lower latitudes; examples include the Benguela Current, the Canary Current, the Humboldt (Peru) Current, and the California Current. Coastal upwelling often brings nutrient-rich water into eastern boundary current regions, making them productive areas of the ocean. Western boundary currents Western boundary currents may themselves be divided into sub-tropical or low-latitude western boundary currents. Sub-tropical western boundary currents are warm, deep, narrow, and fast-flowing current ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is etymology, related to the Old High German ''nord'', both descending from the Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European unit *''ner-'', meaning "left; below" as north is to left when facing the rising sun. Similarly, the other cardinal directions are also related to the sun's position. The Latin word ''borealis'' comes from the Ancient Greek, Greek ''boreas'' "north wind, north" which, according to Ovid, was personified as the wind-god Boreas (god), Boreas, the father of Calais and Zetes. ''Septentrionalis'' is from ''septentriones'', "the seven plow oxen", a name of ''Ursa Major''. The Greek ἀρκτικός (''arktikós'') is named for the same constellation, and is the source of the English word ''Arctic''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ocean Basin
In hydrology, an oceanic basin (or ocean basin) is anywhere on Earth that is covered by seawater. Geologically, most of the ocean basins are large geologic basins that are below sea level. Most commonly the ocean is divided into basins following the continents distribution: the North and South Atlantic (together approximately 75 million km2/ 29 million mi2), North and South Pacific (together approximately 155 million km2/ 59 million mi2), Indian Ocean (68 million km2/ 26 million mi2) and Arctic Ocean (14 million km2/ 5.4 million mi2). Also recognized is the Southern Ocean (20 million km2/ 7 million mi2). All ocean basins collectively cover 71% of the Earth's surface, and together they contain almost 97% of all water on the planet. They have an average depth of almost 4 km (about 2.5 miles). Definitions of boundaries Boundaries based on continents ''" Limits of Oceans and Seas"'',International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), (1953): Limits of Oceans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coriolis Effect
In physics, the Coriolis force is a pseudo force that acts on objects in motion within a frame of reference that rotates with respect to an inertial frame. In a reference frame with clockwise rotation, the force acts to the left of the motion of the object. In one with anticlockwise (or counterclockwise) rotation, the force acts to the right. Deflection of an object due to the Coriolis force is called the Coriolis effect. Though recognized previously by others, the mathematical expression for the Coriolis force appeared in an 1835 paper by French scientist Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis, in connection with the theory of water wheels. Early in the 20th century, the term ''Coriolis force'' began to be used in connection with meteorology. Newton's laws of motion describe the motion of an object in an inertial (non-accelerating) frame of reference. When Newton's laws are transformed to a rotating frame of reference, the Coriolis and centrifugal accelerations appear. When applied ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eos (magazine)
''Eos'' (formerly ''Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union'') is the news magazine published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The magazine publishes news and opinions relevant to the Earth and space sciences, as well as in-depth features on current research and on the relationship of geoscience to social and political questions. ''Eos'' is published online daily, and as an AGU member benefit in 11 issues a year. It accepts both display and classified advertising. History ''Transactions, American Geophysical Union'', began as a way to distribute information about AGU's annual meetings. Launched in 1920, the first volume was reprinted from volume 6, number 10 of the ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' as ''National Research Council Reprint and Circular Series'', number 11, and appeared under the title ''Scientific papers presented before the American Geophysical Union''. It compiled papers from AGU's second annual meeting. These transactions were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Stommel
Henry Melson Stommel (September 27, 1920 – January 17, 1992) was a major contributor to the field of physical oceanography. Beginning in the 1940s, he advanced theories about global ocean circulation patterns and the behavior of the Gulf Stream that form the basis of physical oceanography today. Widely recognized as one of the most influential and productive oceanographers of his time, Stommel was both a groundbreaking theoretician and an astute, seagoing observer. Early life and education Stommel was born in Wilmington, Delaware. An anomaly among modern scientists, Stommel became a full professor without an earned doctorate. He received his B.S. in astronomy from Yale University (1942) and served there as instructor in mathematics and astronomy (1942–44). Academic posts He was research associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1944 to 1959 where the Office of Naval Research generously supported his projects. He became professor of oceanography at Harv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At in area (as defined with a southern Antarctic border), the Pacific Ocean is the largest division of the World Ocean and the hydrosphere and covers approximately 46% of Earth's water surface and about 32% of the planet's total surface area, larger than its entire land area ().Pacific Ocean . ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica Concise.'' 2008: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The centers of both the Land and water hemispheres, water hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere, as well as the Pole of inaccessi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for separating the New World of the Americas (North America and South America) from the Old World of Afro-Eurasia (Africa, Asia, and Europe). Through its separation of Afro-Eurasia from the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean has played a central role in the development of human society, globalization, and the histories of many nations. While the Norse colonization of North America, Norse were the first known humans to cross the Atlantic, it was the expedition of Christopher Columbus in 1492 that proved to be the most consequential. Columbus's expedition ushered in an Age of Discovery, age of exploration and colonization of the Americas by European powers, most notably Portuguese Empire, Portugal, Spanish Empire, Sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wind Stress
In physical oceanography and fluid dynamics, the wind stress is the shear stress exerted by the wind on the free surface, surface of large bodies of water – such as oceans, seas, estuary, estuaries and lakes. When wind is blowing over a water surface, the wind applies a wind force on the water surface. The wind stress is the component of this wind force that is parallel to the surface per unit area. Also, the wind stress can be described as the flux of horizontal momentum applied by the wind on the water surface. The wind stress causes a deformation of the water body whereby wind waves are generated. Also, the wind stress drives ocean currents and is therefore an important driver of the large-scale ocean circulation. The wind stress is affected by the wind speed, the shape of the wind waves and the atmospheric stratification. It is one of the components of the air–sea interaction, with others being the atmospheric pressure on the water surface, as well as the exchange of energy a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vorticity
In continuum mechanics, vorticity is a pseudovector (or axial vector) field that describes the local spinning motion of a continuum near some point (the tendency of something to rotate), as would be seen by an observer located at that point and traveling along with the flow. It is an important quantity in the dynamical theory of fluids and provides a convenient framework for understanding a variety of complex flow phenomena, such as the formation and motion of vortex rings. Mathematically, the vorticity \boldsymbol is the curl of the flow velocity \mathbf v: :\boldsymbol \equiv \nabla \times \mathbf v\,, where \nabla is the nabla operator. Conceptually, \boldsymbol could be determined by marking parts of a continuum in a small neighborhood of the point in question, and watching their ''relative'' displacements as they move along the flow. The vorticity \boldsymbol would be twice the mean angular velocity vector of those particles relative to their center of mass, orie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Potential Vorticity
In fluid mechanics, potential vorticity (PV) is a quantity which is proportional to the dot product of vorticity and stratification. This quantity, following a parcel of air or water, can only be changed by diabatic or frictional processes. It is a useful concept for understanding the generation of vorticity in cyclogenesis (the formation and development of a cyclone), especially along the polar front, and in analyzing flow in the ocean. Potential vorticity (PV) is seen as one of the important theoretical successes of modern meteorology. It is a simplified approach for understanding fluid motions in a rotating system such as the Earth's atmosphere and ocean. Its development traces back to the circulation theorem by Bjerknes in 1898, which is a specialized form of Kelvin's circulation theorem. Starting from Hoskins et al., 1985, PV has been more commonly used in operational weather diagnosis such as tracing dynamics of air parcels and inverting for the full flow field. Even a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sverdrup Transport
The Sverdrup balance, or Sverdrup relation, is a theoretical relationship between the wind stress exerted on the surface of the open ocean and the vertically integrated meridional (north-south) transport of ocean water. History Aside from the oscillatory motions associated with tidal flow, there are two primary causes of large scale flow in the ocean: ''(1)'' thermohaline processes, which induce motion by introducing changes at the surface in temperature and salinity, and therefore in seawater density, and ''(2)'' wind forcing. In the 1940s, when Harald Sverdrup was thinking about calculating the gross features of ocean circulation, he chose to consider exclusively the wind stress component of the forcing. As he says in his 1947 paper, in which he presented the Sverdrup relation, this is probably the more important of the two. After making the assumption that frictional dissipation is negligible, Sverdrup obtained the simple result that the meridional mass transport (the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curl (mathematics)
In vector calculus, the curl, also known as rotor, is a vector operator that describes the Differential (infinitesimal), infinitesimal Circulation (physics), circulation of a vector field in three-dimensional Euclidean space. The curl at a point in the field is represented by a vector (geometry), vector whose length and direction denote the Magnitude (mathematics), magnitude and axis of the maximum circulation. The curl of a field is formally defined as the circulation density at each point of the field. A vector field whose curl is zero is called irrotational. The curl is a form of derivative, differentiation for vector fields. The corresponding form of the fundamental theorem of calculus is Kelvin–Stokes theorem, Stokes' theorem, which relates the surface integral of the curl of a vector field to the line integral of the vector field around the boundary curve. The notation is more common in North America. In the rest of the world, particularly in 20th century scientific li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
