Ocean Currents and gyres

Day 1

Ocean Surface Currents

  • There is one world ocean and 5 Ocean basins

  • Southern ocean has a boundary of 60 degrees  South latitude

  • North pole is 90 degree North latitude and South pole is 90 degree South latitude

  • 0 degree longitude line is called the prime meridian

  • Moon and Sun changes tides

  • When Sun and Moon are on the same side it creates a spring tide

  • When Sun and Moon are 90 degree to each other in the north and south, it creates a neat tide where the high is lower and the low tide is a little bit higher

  • Ocean current

    • A flow of ocean water caused by global winds, the coriolis effect, placement on land, gravitational pull of the moon, Earth, and sun, and density differences.

  • Surface Current

    • A stream of flowing water in the top 100-400 meters of the Ocean that is caused by the wind

  • Coriolis effect

    • Effect of a rotation body on the fluids that flow over its surface

Formation of The Ocean

  • Volcanic outgassing gad oxygen and hydrogen come out of the ground because of the eruptions, then those create water vapor and then condense because of the heat of the core and the bombardment of meteorites

  • Comets and Asteroids had ice on them and when they hit Earth, the Ice would melt

  • Theia crashed into the Earth but not at a direct impact blowing out a chunk of Earth and then that created the Moon

  • Ocean became salty because it broke down rocks which have a little bit of salt in them

  • NA-Sodium and CL-Chlorine create Halite, Halite is the mineral name for salt

  • Lots of topography on the ocean floor because of the tectonic plates boundaries

  • The Angle of Insolation is the angle at which the sun rays strike a location on Earth

  • Full word is Angle of Incoming Solar Radiation

  • Flashlight on ground

  • Day 2

Air DIfferentiation

  • AOI

Ocean Gyres

  • A gyre is a large system of rotating ocean currents

  • Northern hemisphere usually rotate clockwise, other than a small polar current

  • Southern hemisphere usually rotates counterclockwise other then the antarctic current

  • Warm water is only the west side of gyres and cold water is on the east side of them

  • Cold water is on the west side of continents and warm water is on the eastern side of continents usually

  • Some gyres will spin in the opposite direction because of land mass, but they're normally small gyres

  • Gyres are way more complicated than just the major ones

  • There are whirlpools but they are still very large

  • Look like hurricanes on the ocean

  • Two main ocean currents surface currents, and deep ocean currents

  • Ocean currents control 10% of water and deep ocean currents control 90%

  • Wind drags the top levels of water down to 400 m to move with the wind

  • Currents redistribute Earth all over the world