News tagged with ocean currents
Research group suggests Madagascar's unique animals arrived on rafts
(PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since the island of Madagascar was first visited by people, some two thousand years ago, there has been speculation about the unique plants and animals that live on the world’s ...
Mar 20, 2012 |
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Ocean currents speed melting of Antarctic ice
Stronger ocean currents beneath West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf are eroding the ice from below, speeding the melting of the glacier as a whole, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. A grow ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jun 26, 2011 |
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New research points to the significant role of oceans in ancient global cooling (w/ video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Thirty-eight million years ago, tropical jungles thrived in what are now the cornfields of the American Midwest and furry marsupials wandered temperate forests in what is now the frozen Antarctic. ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
May 26, 2011 |
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Missing sunspots: Solar mystery solved
The Sun has been in the news a lot lately because it's beginning to send out more flares and solar storms. Its recent turmoil is particularly newsworthy because the Sun was very quiet for an unusually long ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 02, 2011 |
4.9 / 5 (14) |
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Crocodiles ride ocean currents to travel the high seas
University of Queensland ecologists have unlocked the mystery of how salt-water crocodiles cross large stretches of the sea despite being poor swimmers - they like to surf.
Jun 04, 2010 |
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NASA Study Finds Atlantic 'Conveyor Belt' Not Slowing
(PhysOrg.com) -- New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Mar 26, 2010 |
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Mammoth iceberg could alter ocean circulation: study
An iceberg the size of Luxembourg knocked loose from the Antarctic continent earlier this month could disrupt the ocean currents driving weather patterns around the globe, researchers said Thursday.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Feb 25, 2010 |
3.9 / 5 (26) |
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Study: Animals populated Madagascar by rafting there
How did the lemurs, flying foxes and narrow-striped mongooses get to the large, isolated island of Madagascar sometime after 65 million years ago?
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Jan 20, 2010 |
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Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific to US
Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away - the first time a huge ...
May 28, 2012 |
5 / 5 (4) |
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Japan enters commercial space race
Japan will put a commercial satellite into space on Friday, officials said, in its first foray into the European- and Russian-dominated world of contract launches.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
May 16, 2012 |
5 / 5 (5) |
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Elephant seal tracking reveals hidden lives of deep-diving animals
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who pioneered the use of satellite tags to monitor the migrations of elephant seals have compiled one of the largest datasets available for any marine mammal species, ...
May 15, 2012 |
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Questions about incredible sea turtle migration answered
Immediately after emerging from their underground nests on the lush beaches of eastern Florida, loggerhead sea turtles scramble into the sea and embark alone on a migration that takes them around the entire ...
May 15, 2012 |
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Pacific islands may become refuge for corals in a warming climate, study finds
Scientists have predicted that ocean temperatures will rise in the equatorial Pacific by the end of the century, wreaking havoc on coral reef ecosystems. But a new study shows that climate change could cause ocean currents ...
Apr 29, 2012 |
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Study finds warm ocean currents cause majority of ice loss from Antarctica
Reporting this week in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has established that warm ocean currents are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from A ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Apr 25, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (12) |
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Envisat - biggest environment satellite - goes silent
The European Space Agency said Thursday it had lost contact with Envisat, the biggest Earth-monitoring satellite in history.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Apr 12, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
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Ocean current
An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of ocean water generated by the forces acting upon the water, such as the Earth's rotation, wind, temperature, salinity differences and tides caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun. Depth contours, shoreline configurations and interaction with other currents influence a current's direction and strength.
Ocean currents can flow for thousands of kilometers, and together they create the great flow of the global conveyor belt which plays a dominant part in determining the climate of many of the Earth’s regions. Perhaps the most striking example is the Gulf Stream, which makes northwest Europe much more temperate than any other region at the same latitude. Another example is the Hawaiian Islands, where the climate is cooler (sub-tropical) than the tropical latitudes in which they are located, because of the effect of the California Current.
For more information about Ocean current, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
