How Ocean Currents Work

by Jennifer Horton
Browse the article How Ocean Currents Work

Ocean Current Image Gallery

Ocean Current Image Gallery Large waves like this one often generate powerful ocean
currents. See more ocean current pictures.
Connie Coleman/Getty Images

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Introduction to How Ocean Currents Work

If you've ever lost your hat or a pair of sunglasses in the ocean, then you know that the sea
doesn't stay still. If you didn't retrieve the lost item immediately, it was likely well on its way
to the other side of the world, carried away by ocean currents.
When speaking of water, the word current refers to the motion of the water. Currents are
found in rivers, ponds, marshes and even swimming pools. Few bodies of water have the
intricate system of currents that oceans do, though. Ranging from predictable tidal currents to
fickle rip currents, ocean currents may be driven by tides, winds or differences in density.
They profoundly affect the weather, marine transportation and the cycling of nutrients.
How exactly? Among other things, ocean currents are responsible for the warmer
temperatures in Western Europe, they enable the Antarctic to support vast amounts of plant
and animal life and their disruption likely caused a mass extinction of 95 percent of all
marine life 250 million years ago [source: NOAA: "Ocean"]. One type of ocean current even
continually empties oceans into one another and essentially flips the water in them upside
down every 1,000 years [source: NOAA: "Ocean"].
Knowledge of ocean currents is essential to the shipping and fishing industries and is helpful
for search-and-rescue operations, hazardous material cleanups and recreational swimming
and boating. Using a combination of predicted and real-time measurements of current
patterns, boaters can safely dock and undock boats, rescuers can determine where a missing
person may drift, cleanup crews can anticipate where spills might go and surfers can position
themselves to catch the perfect wave.
Whether you want to learn more about local currents, like the ones that pull you out to sea
when you visit the beach, or the global currents that circumnavigate the globe, this article will
answer all of your basic questions about ocean currents. What causes them? What forms do
they take? How do they affect ecosystems? On the next page, you'll learn about currents that
take place at the ocean's surface.

Cinching Our Belt?

Many scientists fear that global warming could affect the global conveyor belt. If global
warming leads to increased rain, as some believe it might, the added fresh water could
decrease the salinity levels at the poles. Melting ice, another possibility of global warming,
would also decrease salinity levels. Regardless of the means, the end scenario is the same:
Warmer, less dense water won't be dense enough to sink, and the global conveyor belt could
stop -- having far-reaching and devastating consequences [source: NOAA: "Currents"].

Waves approach the shore at an angle, directing some energy parallel to shore and creating
longshore currents.

Photo courtesy NOAA

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Ocean Current Types: Surface Currents

Ocean currents that occur at 328 feet (100 meters) deep or above usually are classified as
surface currents. Surface currents, which include coastal currents and surface ocean
currents, are driven primarily by winds.
You're likely familiar with coastal currents if you've ever gone to the beach. These surface
currents also affect wave and land formations. In order to better understand coastal currents,
it helps to first understand waves.
As winds blow across the ocean, they pull on the water's surface, and the buildup of energy
forms waves. The speed of the wind, the distance it blows and the length of time that it blows
all affect the size of waves. If the wind blows fast, for a long time and for a long distance in
the same direction, large waves form. Waves break when their bases encounter the sea floor
and they become unstable, toppling over onto the shore.
The energy released when waves break on the beach creates longshore currents. When
waves approach the beach at an angle rather than head on, part of the wave's energy is
directed perpendicular to the shore and part of it is directed parallel to the shore. The parallel
energy generates the longshore current, which runs along the shoreline. If you've ever been
swimming in the ocean and felt the ocean tugging you farther down the shore, then you've
felt the impact of a longshore current.
As these currents travel, they pick up sediment and transport it down the beach in a process
known as longshore drift. Longshore drift can form long, narrow outcroppings of land called
spits, as well as barrier islands, long islands located parallel to the coast. Barrier islands
constantly change as longshore currents keep picking up, moving and redepositing sand.
Rip currents are another type of coastal current that form where underwater land formations
prevent waves from flowing straight back out to sea. You've probably seen signs posted at the
beach, warning of rip currents. They result from spent waves (or waves that have already
crashed) funneling out of a narrow opening, like a break in a sandbar, with great force.
Imagine the great volume of water that rushes out of the tub when you open the small drain,

and you get the general idea of a rip current. You can learn all about rip currents in "How Rip
Currents Work."

Upswelling occurs when wind displaces surface water, and deeper water replaces it.
Photo courtesy NOAA
Yet another type of coastal current called upwelling occurs when winds displace surface
water by blowing it away and deeper water rises up to replace it. The opposite process,
downwelling, occurs when wind blows surface water towards a barrier, like the coastline,
and the resulting accumulation of water forces the water on top to sink. Both of these
processes can occur in the open ocean as well.
Upwelling and downwelling are crucial to the cycling of nutrients in the ocean. The cold,
deeper layers of water are rich in nutrients and carbon dioxide, while the warmer surface
waters are rich in oxygen. When the layers trade places, the nutrients and gases do too.
Downwelling prevents dissolved oxygen from being used for the decay of organic matter at
the surface, which could lead to a bloom of anaerobic bacteria and a buildup of toxic
hydrogen sulfide. Upwelling, meanwhile, enables ecosystems to flourish where they
otherwise would not. The influx of nutrients from deeper colder waters nourishes a wide
variety of life in unlikely places, such as Antarctica.
While coastal currents are caused by local winds, surface currents in the open ocean originate
from global wind patterns. On the next page, you'll learn about these currents.

Circular wind patterns create five major gyres at the ocean's surface.

Photo courtesy NOAA

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More Surface Currents

As you've probably gathered by now, wind and water are inseparable. To understand surface
ocean currents, which, as their name suggests, occur in the open ocean, you should know a
little about the winds that fuel them.
Some of these wind patterns are caused by the Coriolis force. If the earth didn't rotate, wind
would travel the globe in straight lines. Instead, the spin of the earth causes winds to
seemingly curve to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and the left in the Southern
Hemisphere. This curvature of the winds is known as the Coriolis effect.
In the Northern Hemisphere, that means that the strong trade winds that originate in the
northeast and blow westward pull the surface of the ocean along with them near the equator.
Thanks to the coastline and the Coriolis effect, the warm-water current then heads north,
turning at about 30 degrees north latitude. The westerlies take over then, completing the
circuit. Blowing from the west, these winds guide the current eastward and south after they
hit land. The two wind patterns create a continual circular pattern of wind flowing clockwise
in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
These circular wind patterns create spiral ocean currents called gyres. Five major gyres flow
both north and south of the equator: the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South
Pacific and Indian Ocean gyres. Smaller gyres also exist at the poles, and one circulates
around Antarctica. Short-lasting, smaller currents often spin off both small and large gyres.
The Gulf Stream, a particularly strong current that is part of the North Atlantic gyre, carries
warm water north from the Gulf of Mexico up the coast of the eastern United States and over
to western Europe. As a result, lucky Floridians living on the state's east coast are cooler in
summer and warmer in winter than surrounding areas, and Western Europe is much warmer
than other areas at the same latitude.
If winds affect only the upper 100 meters (328 feet) of water, how are deeper ocean currents
formed? Find out on the next page.

Current Catastrophes

Before much was known about ocean currents, sailors would stop their boats for the night
only to wake up extremely confused when they found themselves miles away from where
they stopped. The Gulf Stream is one current that presented these ancient mariners with many
challenges. This especially powerful current is 149 miles (240 kilometers) wide and almost 1
mile (1.6) kilometers deep and can move up to 26 billion gallons of water a second [source:
Osher]. That's more than the flow of the Amazon River! [source: MSN Encarta]. The current
has caused so many shipwrecks around Cape Hatteras, a piece of land that juts out sharply
from the east coast of North Carolina, that the area is called the graveyard of the Atlantic.

The global conveyor belt

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Deep Ocean Currents (Global Conveyor

Belt)
Invisible to us terrestrial creatures, an underwater current circles the globe with a force 16
times as strong as all the world's rivers combined [source: NOAA: "Ocean"]. This deep-water
current is known as the global conveyor belt and is driven by density differences in the
water. Water movements driven by differences in density are also known as thermohaline
circulation because water density depends on its temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline).
Density refers to an object's mass per unit volume, or how compact it is. A heavy, compact
bowling ball is obviously going to be denser than an air-filled beach ball. With water, colder
and saltier equals denser.
At the earth's poles, when water freezes, the salt doesn't necessarily freeze with it, so a large
volume of dense cold, salt water is left behind. When this dense water sinks to the ocean
floor, more water moves in to replace it, creating a current. The new water also gets cold and
sinks, continuing the cycle. Incredibly, this process drives a current of water around the
globe.
The global conveyor belt begins with the cold water near the North Pole and heads south
between South America and Africa toward Antarctica, partly directed by the landmasses it
encounters. In Antarctica, it gets recharged with more cold water and then splits in two
directions -- one section heads to the Indian Ocean and the other to the Pacific Ocean. As the
two sections near the equator, they warm up and rise to the surface in what you may
remember as upwelling. When they can't go any farther, the two sections loop back to the
South Atlantic Ocean and finally back to the North Atlantic Ocean, where the cycle starts
again.
The global conveyor belt moves much more slowly than surface currents -- a few centimeters
per second, compared to tens or hundreds of centimeters per second. Scientists estimate that it
takes one section of the belt 1,000 years to complete one full circuit of the globe. However
slow it is, though, it moves a vast amount of water -- more than 100 times the flow of the
Amazon River. [source: NOAA: "Currents"].
The global conveyor belt is crucial to the base of the world's food chain. As it transports
water around the globe, it enriches carbon dioxide-poor, nutrient-depleted surface waters by
carrying them through the ocean's deeper layers where those elements are abundant. The
nutrients and carbon dioxide from the bottom layers that are distributed through the upper
layers enable the growth of algae and seaweed that ultimately support all forms of life. The
belt also helps to regulate temperatures.
Read on to learn about a current that isn't caused by winds or density differences but by
forces that are out of this world.

Fast Fact

A well-known density-driven current occurs where the saltier Mediterranean Sea empties into
the Atlantic Ocean. During World War II, submarines used this current to enter and leave the
Mediterranean without even turning on their engines!

The gravitational pull of the moon usually creates two high tides and two low tides each day.
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Tidal Currents
Tidal currents, as their name suggests, are generated by tides. Tides are essentially long,
slow waves created by the gravitational pull of the moon, and to a lesser degree, the sun, on

the earth's surface. Since the moon is so much closer to the earth than the sun, its pull has
more influence on the tides.
The moon's gravitational pull forces the ocean to bulge outwards on opposite sides of the
earth, which causes a rise in the water level in places that are aligned with the moon and a
decrease in water levels halfway between those two places. This rise in water level is
accompanied by a horizontal movement of water called the tidal current.
Tidal currents differ from the currents previously mentioned in that they don't quite flow as a
continuous stream. They also switch directions every time the tide transitions between high
and low. Although tides and tidal currents don't have much impact in the open oceans, they
can create a rapid current of up to 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) per hour when they flow in and
out of narrower areas like bays, estuaries and harbors [source: Skinner]. Fast tidal currents
toss sediment around and affect plant and animal life. Currents may, for example, transfer a
fish's eggs from an estuary out into the open sea or carry nutrients that the fish needs from the
sea into the estuary.
The strongest tidal currents occur at or around the peak of high and low tides. When the tide
is rising and the flow of the current is directed towards the shore, the tidal current is called
the flood current, and when the tide is receding and the current is directed back out to sea, it
is called the ebb current. Because the relative positions of the moon, sun and earth change at
a known rate, tidal currents are predictable.
Currents, whether tidal, surface or deep ocean, profoundly affect the world as we know it. To
learn more about the complex systems that drive ocean currents, dive into the links on the
next page.

Current Affairs
A few lesser-known surface currents are nevertheless responsible for some significant events.
The warm, eastward-flowing, equatorial counter current, for example, can trigger the weather
pattern known as El Nino. A colder surface current, the Labrador current, flows along the
west coast of Greenland and often sends icebergs into the North Atlantic shipping lanes. This
current is responsible for causing the sinking of the Titanic. [Source: NOAA: "Ocean"]

Ocean Currents and Climate

There are two type of Ocean Currents:

1. Surface Currents--Surface Circulation

These waters make up about 10% of all the water in the ocean.
These waters are the upper 400 meters of the ocean.

2. Deep Water Currents--Thermohaline Circulation

These waters make up the other 90% of the ocean
These waters move around the ocean basins by density driven forces and gravity.
The density difference is a function of different temperatures and salinity
These deep waters sink into the deep ocean basins at high latitudes where the temperatures
are cold enough to cause the density to increase.

Ocean Currents are influenced by two types of forces

1. Primary Forces--start the water moving
The primary forces are:

1. Solar Heating
2. Winds
3. Gravity
4. Coriolis
2. Secondary Forces--influence where the currents flow

1. Surface Circulation

Solar heating cause water to expand. Near the equator the

water is about 8 centimeters high than in middle latitudes.
This cause a very slight slope and water wants to flow
down the slope.
Winds blowing on the surface of the ocean push the water.
Friction is the coupling between the wind and the water's

surface.
A wind blowing for 10 hours across the ocean will cause
the surface waters to flow at about 2% of the wind speed.
Water will pile up in the direction the wind is blowing.
Gravity will tend to pull the water down the "hill" or pile
of water against the pressure gradient.
But the Coriolis Force intervenes and cause the water to
move to the right (in the northern hemisphere) around the
mound of water.

These large mounds of water and the flow around them are
called Gyres. The produce large circular currents in all the
ocean basins.

Gyres
North Atlantic Gyre

Note how the North Atlantic Gyre is separated into four distinct
Currents, The North Equatorial Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic
Current, and the Canary Current.
But why doesn't the water spin towards the center of the ocean? Why does it
flow around the hill in this circular motion.
Remember the hill of water-- This hill is formed by the inward push of water
through a process call Ekman Transport

Remember the Coriolis Force move objects to the right in

the northern hemisphere

Ekman Transport
Wind blowing on the surface of the ocean has the greatest effect on the surface.
However, for the lower layers of the ocean to move they must be pushed by the
friction between the layers of water above. Consequently, the lower layer moves
slower than the layer above. With each successive layer down in the water column
the speed is reduce. This leads to the spiral affect seen in the above diagram.

The net
movement
of water
(averaged
over the
entire
upper 330
meters of
the ocean)
is 90o to
the right
of the
wind
direction
(in the northern hemisphere).

When the water is pushed to the right it forms the hill we described above. So, when water is
pushed along by the wind it wants to be turned to the right by the Coriolis force (in the
northern hemisphere) but it must fight against gravity (trying to move up the hill of water
formed by Ekman transport). A balance is met between the Coriolis and the gravity
(pressure gradient force). This balance produces a balanced flow called a Geostrophic

current.

Eastern and Western Boundary Currents

Boundary Currents are the major geostrophic currents around the gyre

Note the difference is strength (Sv) between

the western and eastern boundary currents. This is caused by the effect of the
rotating Earth which tends to move the "hill" of water to the western sides of the
ocean basins

The Gulf Stream is an example of a Western Boundary Current

The effect of winds on the vertical movement of water

Upwelling along the coast caused by Ekman transport of waters (waters move
to the right of the wind).
The waters moved offshore are replaced by waters from below. This brings cold,
nutrient rich waters to the surface.

Downwelling caused by Ekman transport onshore (movement of water to the right

of the wind direction).

Downwelling along a coast

Ancient Current Systems

Deep Water Circulation