Ocean Surface Currents
Streamlike movements of water that occur at or near the surface of the ocean.
What are surface currents?
It looks like a ribbon more than it does a tube.
What does the East Australian Current appear to look like?
This place has warmer climates because of surface currents.
What is Iceland?
Streamlike movements of water that occur far below the ocean surface.
What are deep currents?
This is the horizontal distance between the two adjacent crests or troughs.
What is the wavelength?
These blow across the Earth's surface and create surface currents.
What are global winds?
Transports 40,000 million cubic meters of water southward each second.
What is the East Australian Current?
These begin near the equator.
What are warm water currents?
These currents carry warm water and are less dense, while these other currents carry cold water and are denser.
What is the difference between deep currents and surface currents?
These are called crests and troughs.
Which two components make waves?
Flows from Florida to Iceland and is one of the longest surface currents in the world.
What is the Gulf Stream?
This is equivalent to 16,000 Olympic swimming pools flowing along a coastline.
What is 40 million cubic meters of water?
This causes changes in the atmosphere and greatly affect the climate.
What are warm and cool surface currents?
These affect the density of the water.
What is temperature and salinity?
This is the vertical distance between a wave crest and its through.
What is the wave height?
Global winds, the Coriolis effect, continental deflections, and the water temperature.
What four factors are surface currents controlled by?
Almost 100 kilometers wide, and is more than 1.5 kilometers deep.
How big is the East Australian Current?
This place has colder climates because of surface currents.
What is San Francisco?
At this range, the water temperature starts to decrease.
What is 200 meters?
Friction between the wind and the surface of the water.
Why do ocean waves form?
This causes currents in the Northern Hemisphere turn clockwise while currents in the Southern Hemisphere turn counterclockwise.
What is the Coriolis effect?
In the movie, it may look like the current is narrow and you can jump in and out of it. In reality, it is much bigger and a lot wilder than in the movie.
How is Nemo's East Australian Current different from the real East Australian Current?
It causes the direction to change when currents meet landforms.
What is a continental deflection?
Cold air cools the water molecules at the surface which causes them to come closer together.
What causes the volume of water to decrease?
This is a wave that requires a sort of matter to travel through.
What is a mechanical wave?