Cold Wind of the Western Winds

About 70% of the world's surface is occupied by the waters of the World Ocean. They are constantly in motion under the influence of long-term or short-term effects of various origins. Such movements of huge masses of water have a global impact on the weather in a given region of the planet and on the climate of the Earth as a whole. In the Southern Hemisphere, this influence is exerted by a powerful cold current, called the current of the Western winds.

Causes of marine currents

The water of the World Ocean in different areas of the planet differs in temperature, density, salinity, color and can not physically represent a single conglomerate. Its displacement is usually caused by the combined action of several forces acting differently at different depths.

On the surface of the ocean, the main factor in the formation of currents is the prevailing wind. Trade winds having a relatively constant direction are called the main reason for the formation of two main streams that retain direction for a long time: the Northern and Southern equatorial currents. They inject water to the western margins of the Atlantic and the Pacific, where, depending on the shape of the continents, separate flows are formed. There are circulations that support including monsoon winds blowing in the summer from sea to land, and in winter - on the contrary.

Warm and cold

The world ocean is a global air conditioner of the planet, which has several temperature regimes. Among the varieties of translational movement of water distinguish between warm and cold currents. The temperature of the sea flow is not absolute, but relative. Warmer it makes a cooler environment, and cold - leaking in heated ocean layers and in the hottest climate.

Usually the current directed from the equator, from high latitudes to lower ones, is warm. If the stream originated to the south or north of the equator and carries water from a cooler area, then it is a cold current.

Relativity of the temperature characteristic of oceanic streams is visible on an example of two oceanic streams located on opposite places of a planet. The Gulf Stream - the most famous sea current forming the climate in the Northern Hemisphere, has a water temperature in the range of 4-6 ° C and refers to warm, warming washed beaches. A powerful cold current is the Bengelskoe - one of the branches of the current of the Western winds. Beyond the Cape of Good Hope, it carries water heated to 20 ° C.

On the Antarctic border

Large-scale water movements in the circumpolar regions of the Southern Hemisphere are the most powerful on the planet. They form the Antarctic circumpolar (latin circum-around + polaris-polar) current, surrounding the entire planet around the planet from west to east. The largest cold current is the main filling of the conventional geographic formation - the Southern Ocean, formed by the waters of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans, which wash Antarctica.

Along the shores of the sixth continent, along 55 ° south latitude, the conditional southern boundary of this stream passes, and the northern lies along the 40th parallel. At the junction of cold coastal waters from the ice-covered southern continent and the heated southern oceanic outskirts, the strongest winds of the southern hemisphere are born.

Roaring forties

This is another name that is on the planet during the Western winds.

The latitudes along which the largest cold current flows are given several extreme names. The "roaring" forties are surrounded by "howling" and "violent" fifties and "piercing" sixties. The average wind speed in this area is 7-13 m / s. On the Beaufort scale, this wind is called fresh and strong, and a storm and a strong storm (25 m / s) are a common thing.

A powerful circumpolar cold current, not encountering a continental obstacle, strong and permanent western winds made these latitudes the shortest path for sailboats. Here lay the "clipper route", named so by the type of ships valued for the fastest delivery of colonial goods from India and China to Europe. The famous "tea" clipper established speed records in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, if they could successfully skirt the southern extremities of Africa and South America.

Width, length, speed of flow

The sea current of the Southern winds with a total length of 30,000 km and a width of up to 1,000 km has a power (volume flow of water) of 125-150 Sv (Swedes), ie, in a second the flow carries up to 150,000 cubic meters of water. This is comparable to the power that the Gulf Stream has in some places. The current velocity in the surface layer of ocean waters is from 0.4 to 0.9 km / h, in the depth - up to 0.4 km / h.

The water temperature of the Antarctic circumpolar current is different in its largest branches running in three different oceans. The course of the Western winds consists of:

• Falkland and Bengal current in the Atlantic.
• West Australian - in the Indian Ocean.
• Pacific Peruvian Current.

In the southern part of the current, the upper layer of the stream has a temperature of 1-2 ° C, in the northern part it is 12-15 ° C.

On the surface and in the depths

The world ocean is a single organism. It is established that in the ocean the entire thickness of water is in constant motion. Horizontal movements are supplemented by vertical movements when less dense or more heated layers rise upward. The study of previously inaccessible deep currents continues, which are often opposite in the direction of surface currents.

In 2010, Japanese scientists discovered a powerful deep current off the coast of Antarctica, in the region of Adelie Land. In the Ross Sea, water flows from the melting glaciers, forming a flow of 30 million m ³ / s at a depth of 3000 meters. The current speed is 0.7 km / h and the water temperature is + 0.2 ° C. This is the coldest current in the South Sea.