Atmosphere Pressure & Hurricanes
High-pressure systems are usually associated with this kind of weather because cooler, denser air is sinking.
What is clear/good weather?
These two ions are the dominant contributors to seawater salinity.
What are sodium (Na⁺) and chloride (Cl⁻)?
Photosynthetic plankton are restricted to this upper 0–200 m layer of the ocean.
What is the photic zone?
These two properties of seawater primarily control its density.
What are temperature and salinity?
Currents at the sea surface driven directly by winds (like the Gulf Stream) are this type of current.
What are surface currents?
In meteorology, this is defined as air moving from high pressure to low pressure.
What is wind?
Average open-ocean salinity is about 3.5%, which is also written as this many Practical Salinity Units.
What is 35 PSU?
Extending from about 200–1000 m with minimal light, this depth range is also known as the “dim” layer.
What is the twilight zone?
This term refers to the boundary separating the low-density surface ocean from the higher-density deep ocean.
What is the pycnocline?
In the Northern Hemisphere, Ekman transport causes the net movement of surface water to be this many degrees to the right of the wind direction.
What is 90° to the right?
These breezes revers direction between day and night because land heats and cools faster than the ocean.
What are sea breezes and land breezes?
This term is defined as “amount of ion in the oceans divided by the ion removal/addition rate.”
What is residence time?
Nutrient concentrations are low at the surface but high near the oxygen minimum zone because this process releases nitrate and phosphate as organic matter sinks.
What is respiration/decomposition of sinking organic matter?
Below the thermocline, deep ocean water is surprisingly uniform and typically around this temperature in °C.
What is about 2°C?
Large, rotating current systems like those in the North Pacific and North Atlantic are called this.
What are gyres?
North Atlantic hurricanes are fueled when sea surface temperatures exceed what °C.
What is 26°C (about 79°F)?
Sodium, chloride, magnesium, potassium, and sulfate are called this type of ions because they are abundant and well-mixed with very long residence times.
What are conservative ions?
When CO₂ dissolves into seawater it reacts with water to form this acid, driving ocean acidification.
What is carbonic acid (H₂CO₃)?
High-density deep water forms mainly in these two polar regions.
What are near North Atlantic and near Antarctica?
When meanders in the Gulf Stream pinch off, they can form rotating warm blobs of water that bring tropical fish to New England.
What are warm core eddies (or warm core rings)?
In the Northern Hemisphere, hurricanes rotate this direction because the Coriolis effect deflects winds to the right.
What is counterclockwise?
This zone name refers to the layer of rapidly changing salinity with depth in the upper ocean.
What is the halocline?
The ocean appears blue primarily because these wavelengths are absorbed most readily, while blue light is scattered and reflected.
What are violet and red wavelengths being absorbed, leaving blue scattered?
This phrase describes the overall layering of the ocean into a low-density surface layer and a denser deep layer that circulate by different mechanisms.
What is density stratification of the ocean?
This “patch” in the North Pacific Gyre is famous for extremely high concentrations of floating plastic.
What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?