|
Deepseawaters
Home Deepseawaters
Articles What's
to see in the ocean?
What's to see in the Ocean?
Solar Powered
The
ocean plays an essential role in the world's climate system,
absorbing about half the heat from the sun. The heat escapes
to warm the atmosphere, mainly through evaporation either
locally or months or years later having been transported by
ocean currents thousands of kilometres.
The
upper three metres of the ocean can hold more heat
than the entire atmosphere, and sea surface
and subsurface temperatures are now used by meteorologists
when they make climate forecasts.
The
sun's energy also drives large-scale wind systems and cells
in the atmosphere. In turn, the winds, along with sinking
cold water in the polar and subpolar oceans, drive the ocean.
The resulting ocean currents redistribute the energy absorbed
from the sun throughout the world's oceans, carrying it away
from the region of greatest heat in the tropics towards the
colder polar regions.
Australia's
climate variability is strongly influenced by the Pacific
Ocean, the El Niņo/Southern Oscillation phenomenon and sea
surface temperature patterns in the Indian and Southern Oceans.
Long term, the Southern Ocean is critical in evaluating the
timing and regional impacts of climate change.
Ocean Circulation
Winds
move across the earth's surface towards the west near the
equator (trade winds) and towards the east in the temperate
mid-latitudes (Westerlies and Roaring Forties). Their effects
create large circulation patterns in each of the Atlantic,
Indian and Pacific Ocean basins, moving clockwise
north of the equator and anticlockwise south of the equator.
The
gyres (or circular motions) move water from equatorial to
polar regions along the eastern coasts of continents as intense
warm currents (like the East Australia Current). In regions
near the equa |