Questions: Pacific Ocean and Northern Hemisphere
QUESTIONS #1-10: 1. Gyres formed from 3 or 4 currents in the Northern Hemisphere move in what type of a circular pattern? Gyres flow clockwise in Northern Hemisphere oceans
2. What type of a circular pattern do the gyres move within in the Southern Hemisphere? counterclockwise in Southern Hemisphere oceans because of the Coriolis Effect.
3. Which current could carry a vessel around the world without the assistance of any other current? The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC -- also the "West Wind Drift"), flows in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, and nothing gets in its way. It's the strongest current on Earth. People may be expecting else to take you "around the world" but that is the correct answer. Always flowing from west to east.
4. If you were traveling from South America to Labrador which currents would you take to arrive there? The gulf stream
5. How do warm currents become heated? How do cool currents become cooled? Water is an enormously efficient heat-sink. Solar heat absorbed by bodies of water during the day, or in the summer, is released at night, or in winter. But the heat in the ocean is also circulating. Temperature & Salinity control the sinking of surface water to the deep ocean, which affects long-term climate change.
6. Explain the Ekman Spiral , and the Ekman Transport. Ekman spiral: If a steady wind was blowing over water (deep) the currents would in fact move at a 45° angle to the right (in the northern hemisphere). They would not just go in the same direction as the wind blowing. The reason for this is the Coriolis effect (causes objects to move to the right of applied forces in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere). When the wind blows on the ocean surface in the northern hemisphere, the surface current moves to the right of the wind. As the water at the surface pushes on water below it, this water moves yet further to the right of the wind, and so on. So, the deeper you go the more to the
2. What type of a circular pattern do the gyres move within in the Southern Hemisphere? counterclockwise in Southern Hemisphere oceans because of the Coriolis Effect.
3. Which current could carry a vessel around the world without the assistance of any other current? The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC -- also the "West Wind Drift"), flows in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, and nothing gets in its way. It's the strongest current on Earth. People may be expecting else to take you "around the world" but that is the correct answer. Always flowing from west to east.
4. If you were traveling from South America to Labrador which currents would you take to arrive there? The gulf stream
5. How do warm currents become heated? How do cool currents become cooled? Water is an enormously efficient heat-sink. Solar heat absorbed by bodies of water during the day, or in the summer, is released at night, or in winter. But the heat in the ocean is also circulating. Temperature & Salinity control the sinking of surface water to the deep ocean, which affects long-term climate change.
6. Explain the Ekman Spiral , and the Ekman Transport. Ekman spiral: If a steady wind was blowing over water (deep) the currents would in fact move at a 45° angle to the right (in the northern hemisphere). They would not just go in the same direction as the wind blowing. The reason for this is the Coriolis effect (causes objects to move to the right of applied forces in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere). When the wind blows on the ocean surface in the northern hemisphere, the surface current moves to the right of the wind. As the water at the surface pushes on water below it, this water moves yet further to the right of the wind, and so on. So, the deeper you go the more to the