11.2 Flashcards
Ocean current?
A large amount of ocean water that means, in a particular or unchanged direction
How many ocean currents are there in the world?
Over 20
What do ocean currents Carry?
Vast quantity of dissolved minerals, Solar energy, carbon dioxide, plankton
Plankton?
Microscopic plants and animals that are essential food sources for all the other organisms in the ocean
What is the largest ocean current in the world?
Antarctic circumpolar
What r the two types of ocean currents?
Surface currents
Deep water currents
Wind action?
The movement of surface currents
What is the movement of deep currents caused by?
Temperature and salinity of water
What’s another way that the ocean moves?
Waves ruffling the surface of the water and the rise and fall of the water level (tide)
What makes surface currents move?
Wind, spinning of earth on its axis, the shape of earths land masses, uneven heating of the atmosphere
Wind is the result of…
Masses of air moving rapidly from one area to another cuz of temperature differences
How is wind created
As air get heated by the sun, the Particles gain energy and expand. This makes them less dense so they rise. When that happens, cooler, denser air quickly moves into the area left empty by the rising air molecules
What are the direction and speed of surface currents connected to?
Connected to the direction and speed of the wind blowing over the water
What does the spinning of earth on its axis effect?
Winds and ocean currents
What way does earth spin?
West to east (clockwise)
How does the earth spinning effect ocean currents and winds?
as winds and currents move over this spinning body, there path gets redirects (deflected) depending in which side of the equater there on
What is this alteration of direction called?
The Coriolis effect
What direction would the wind be blowing if u were standing on the surface if the earth in the northern hemisphere?
Right (east)
What direction would the wind be blowing if you were at standing on the surface of the earth in the Southern Hemisphere?
Left (west)
How do continents affect surface currents?
Effect how and where surface currents move
Even though all the oceans are connected, how do we treat it?
We treat it as 5 different ocean basins separated by the natural barriers of the continents
What makes deep currents move?
Water temperature and salinity
What does temperature affect?
The density of water
The colder the water, the greater or lesser the density?
Greater
Where does denser, colder water, tend to sink?what will the water do?
Sink beneath warmer water, where the water will move along the ocean floor.
What is the sinking and movement of dense water beneath surface water called?
Density current
What are the three layers of ocean water?
Surface layer (mixed layer), thermocline, deep water