deep ocean currents
What causes most deep ocean currents?
Surface wind-driven currents generate upwelling currents in conjunction with landforms, creating deepwater currents. Currents may also be caused by density differences in water masses due to temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline) variations via a process known as thermohaline circulation.
What do surface currents affect?
Ocean currents act much like a conveyer belt, transporting warm water and precipitation from the equator toward the poles and cold water from the poles back to the tropics. Thus, currents regulate global climate, helping to counteract the uneven distribution of solar radiation reaching Earth's surface.
What causes weather to change?
Geological records show that there have been a number of large variations in the Earth's climate. These have been caused by many natural factors, including changes in the sun, emissions from volcanoes, variations in Earth's orbit and levels of carbon dioxide (CO2).
What are 3 facts about air masses?
Equatorial air masses develop near the Equator, and are warm. Air masses are also identified based on whether they form over land or over water. Maritime air masses form over water and are humid. Continental air masses form over land and are dry.
What three things cause deep currents?
Oceanic currents are driven by three main factors:
Do surface currents depend on weather?
What are the 3 most important aspects of weather?
Every weather forecast contains the three main weather parameters that we have already outlined above: temperature, precipitation, and wind.
What is the relationship between air masses and fronts?
What are deep ocean currents most affected by?
These deep-ocean currents are driven by differences in the water's density, which is controlled by temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline). This process is known as thermohaline circulation.
What are the fastest surface currents?
he Gulf Stream is the fastest ocean current in the world, reaching peak velocities of 2 metres per second.
What causes air masses and fronts?
Fronts develop when two air masses with different temperatures and, in most cases, different moisture contents come into contact with each other. The result depends on the relative temperature and moisture content of the two air masses and the relative movement of the two masses.
How deep do ocean currents go?
Do surface currents always move?
Ocean water is constantly moving, and not only in the form of waves and tides. Ocean currents flow like vast rivers, sweeping along predictable paths
What information does a weather map provide?
What is it called when air masses meet?
What are deep ocean currents called?
Thermohaline circulation
What are the 5 main surface currents?
There are five major ocean-wide gyres—the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Indian Ocean gyres. Each is flanked by a strong and narrow “western boundary current,” and a weak and broad “eastern boundary current” (Ross, 1995).
What are 7 things that weather maps show?
What are the factors affecting air mass?
In general, air mass factors depend on a number of factors, including: solar zenith angle, height of the layer being perturbed, wavelength, the type and abundance of aerosols, and the altitude and direction of observation.