What creates the east wind drift?
What creates the east wind drift?
The pressure change and diminished trade winds cause warm surface water to move eastward along the Equator from the western Pacific, while the warm surface layer in the east becomes thicker.
What is Antarctic drift?
Antarctic Circumpolar Current, also called ACC or West Wind Drift, wind-driven surface oceanic current encircling Antarctica and flowing from west to east. Affected by adjacent landmasses, submarine topography, and prevailing winds, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is irregular in width and course.
What is the Antarctic convergence zone?
Antarctic Convergence, transition region of the Southern Hemisphere, a major boundary zone of the world’s oceans that separates the waters surrounding Antarctica into Antarctic and sub-antarctic regions.
Is Antarctica affected by El Nino?
And recent research suggests that the El Niño cycle affects Antarctic ice shelves, with more melting from below in their floating sections, but also with increased snowfall on the surface that can thicken the ice.
What is the only current that completely encircles the earth?
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the only current to completely encircle Earth (Figure 9.16). The current moves more water than any other current.
Why is the Antarctic Circumpolar Current able to flow all the way around Antarctica without bending north or south?
The current is circumpolar due to the lack of any landmass connecting with Antarctica and this keeps warm ocean waters away from Antarctica, enabling that continent to maintain its huge ice sheet.
What current completely encircles the Earth?
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the only current to completely encircle Earth (Figure 9.16).
Why is the Antarctica convergence so called?
The currents in these oceans tend to also run in a west to east direction at these southerly latitudes resulting in a mixing of the different ocean waters along the entire northern boundary of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This is known as the Antarctic Convergence.
How does La Niña affect Antarctica?
Upwelling of the Circumpolar Deep Water melts and thins the deeper, thicker ice shelves from below. La Niña’s deeper Amundsen Sea Low leads to more southeast-to-northwest winds, causing the opposite effects—drier, colder air and less snow, but also less warm water upwelling.
