Life in the Open Ocean. Joseph J. Torres
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Ocean
The Oceans and Ocean Basins
Since the year 2000, when the Southern Ocean gained official status from the International Hydrographic Organization, the Earth has had five officially recognized major oceans: The Arctic Ocean, The Atlantic Ocean, The Indian Ocean, The Pacific Ocean, and the Southern Ocean. Vital statistics for the five oceans are given in Table 1.1.
The largest and deepest ocean basin is the Pacific, whose sheer vastness really requires a globe to appreciate. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans, each somewhat less than half the size of the Pacific, follow in size. The two polar oceans, the Southern and Arctic, are the smallest. The Southern Ocean, extending from a latitude of 60° south to the Antarctic Continent, comprises the southernmost portions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, which is why it was only recently officially recognized as an Ocean in and of itself. It is worth mentioning here that the Arctic and Antarctic are fundamentally quite different. Both are quite cold, of course, and sea ice plays a large role in the ecology of each. However, the Antarctic is a land mass surrounded by ocean, whereas the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land (Figure 1.4a and b).
The continents define the boundaries of the ocean basins. Within each of the basins, a characteristic circulation transports large quantities of water with all the elements that such bodies of water contain, including plants, animals, gases, salt, and heat. Energy for the water movement is provided by the radiation of the Sun and the rotation of the Earth. The Sun’s heat drives circulation within the atmosphere, producing the Earth’s prevailing wind patterns that in turn drive surface ocean circulation. Deep ocean circulation, which has a more profound vertical component, is driven by changes in seawater density. Cooler or more saline water will sink below a warmer or less saline body of water. Since the density of seawater is determined by its temperature and salinity, solar radiation ultimately is responsible for deep‐ocean circulation as well. Latitudinal gradients in temperature cause heat loss or gain across the ocean–atmosphere interface. Changes in salinity result from evaporation, precipitation, and in polar regions from the freezing and melting of sea ice. An understanding of the influence of the Earth’s rotation on ocean circulation is less intuitive; that influence is described in the next section.
Figure 1.4 The Polar Oceans. (a) Arctic Ocean basin. (b) Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica.
Source: NASA.
Ocean Circulation
For our purposes, ocean currents are of two basic types: surface and deep. Surface currents (Figure 1.5) are responsible for transport of about 10% of the oceanic volume and extend to about 400 m. The Earth’s prevailing winds interact with surface waters through friction, literally driving the water before them and forming large current systems, or gyres, in each of the ocean basins. The gyres circulate clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern. The trade winds, persistent surface easterlies between the equator and about 30° latitude, are a major driving force for the central ocean gyres and were critical to past exploration and commerce. Deep‐ocean currents (Figure 1.6) transport the remaining 90% of the oceanic volume and are the result of the Earth’s thermohaline circulation or the “Great Ocean Conveyor” (Broecker 1992).
Surface Currents: Ocean Gyres and Geostrophic Flow
Four forces combine to produce the surface currents in the global ocean: surface winds, the Sun’s radiation, gravity, and the Coriolis force. Let us begin with the most complicated: the Coriolis force, sometimes known as the Coriolis effect.
Figure 1.5 Geostrophic (surface) currents.
Source: NASA.
Figure 1.6 Thermohaline (deep) currents.
Source: NOAA.
Coriolis Force
The Coriolis force, as it applies to water movement in the oceans, is a result of the fact that the vast majority of the ocean’s volume is only loosely coupled to the surface of the Earth. The “no slip” condition, discussed in the section on viscosity, applies only to the boundary formed by the ocean bottom. The remaining volume of the ocean moves with the Earth as it rotates, but there is slippage due to the near absence of frictional coupling.
Consider the fact that the Earth is a sphere rotating from west to east. Now imagine that the Earth is sliced in half at the equator and we are looking down at it. It would appear as a disk that rotates through 360° in a 24‐hour period. Now imagine taking another slice of the Earth about halfway between the equator and the North pole. This second slice will also appear as a disk but a smaller one than the disk described by the equator (Figure 1.7a). It will also rotate through 360° in a 24‐hour period but, because the circumference of this smaller disk is less than the equator’s disk, its velocity of rotation is also less. A city on the equator – Bogotá, Colombia, for example – is moving at a velocity of 1668 km h−1 as the Earth rotates. Meanwhile Ottawa, Canada, at about 45 °N, is moving at 1180 km h−1 (Figure 1.7b). The difference in relative velocities with latitude accounts for a difference of nearly 500 km traveled per hour and is at the heart of the Coriolis effect.
A classic example of the effect of the Coriolis force is to envision a missile or cannonball