What are ocean currents give answer?

What are ocean currents give answer?

Ocean currents are the continuous, predictable, directional movement of seawater driven by gravity, wind (Coriolis Effect), and water density. Ocean water moves in two directions: horizontally and vertically. Horizontal movements are referred to as currents, while vertical changes are called upwellings or downwellings.

What are ocean currents 7?

Ocean currents are streams of water flowing constantly on the ocean surface in definite directions. The ocean currents may be warm or cold. The warm ocean currents originate near the equator and move towards the poles. The ocean current influences the temperature conditions of the area.

What are ocean currents 2 examples?

Two types of ocean circulation

• Equatorial currents. At the Equator the currents are for the most part directed toward the west, the North Equatorial Current in the Northern Hemisphere and the South Equatorial Current in the Southern Hemisphere.
• The subtropical gyres.
• The subpolar gyres.

What are the 3 major ocean currents?

Currents, The North Equatorial Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current, and the Canary Current.

What is the importance of ocean currents?

By moving heat from the equator toward the poles, ocean currents play an important role in controlling the climate. Ocean currents are also critically important to sea life. They carry nutrients and food to organisms that live permanently attached in one place, and carry reproductive cells and ocean life to new places.

What is the definition of surface current?

Surface currents are currents that are located in the upper 1,300 feet of the ocean, as opposed to deep in the ocean. Currents are simply how water moves from one place to another, but they can be very strong and forceful. Surface currents are affects by gravity, wind, the Coriolis Effect, and continental deflection.

What are the 5 major ocean 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 cold currents?

Think of cold currents as currents moving toward the Equator. These waters are colder than the water they are moving into. You would be swimming into a current colder than the surrounding water — thus a cold current. A warm current is just the reverse. A warm current is moving away from the Equator toward the poles.

What are the types of currents?

The two basic types of currents – surface and deep-water currents – help define the character and flow of ocean waters across the planet.

What are the different currents?

There are two types of currents, surface currents and deep water currents, that dictate how and where water will move.

What are the causes of currents?

Oceanic currents are driven by three main factors:

• The rise and fall of the tides. Tides create a current in the oceans, which are strongest near the shore, and in bays and estuaries along the coast.
• Wind. Winds drive currents that are at or near the ocean’s surface.
• Thermohaline circulation.

What are the effects of ocean current?

Ocean currents act as conveyer belts of warm and cold water, sending heat toward the polar regions and helping tropical areas cool off, thus influencing both weather and climate.

What are 3 factors that affect ocean currents?

Atmospheric pressure, winds, precipitation, evaporation and insolation. 3. Factors originating within the sea: Pressure gradient, temperature difference, salinity, density and melting of ice. 4. Factors modifying the ocean currents: Direction and shape of the coast, seasonal variations and bottom topography.

What are the four types of ocean currents?

There are two types of ocean currents: surface currents and deep water currents. Primary forces such as solar heating and winds start ocean currents. Secondary forces, including gravity and the Coriolis force, direct where the current goes.

What are the causes and effects of ocean currents?

Wind, temperature differences, water density and salinity all play a role in generating ocean currents. Currents may also be influenced by external forces, such as earthquakes, the coriolis effect produced by the Earth’s rotation, and the gravitational pull of the Moon.

What are the 7 major ocean currents?

Currents move large amounts of water great distances. Countless currents have been named, but the seven major ones are the West Wind Drift (or the Antarctic Circumpolar Current), East Wind Drift, the North and South Equatorial currents, the Peru Current, the Kuroshio Current and the Gulf Stream .