The Ocean Conveyor Belt

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1 6E3 Earth s Water The Ocean onveyor elt Lexile 700L 1 Water in the ocean is always moving. Waves break the surface. urrents move in the shallows and in the depths. urrents near the surface are mainly caused by the winds and tides. eep water currents run on a different engine. 2 urrents run through all of the Earth s oceans. They are important for several reasons. The currents help keep global temperatures even. They move energy around the oceans. Otherwise, the equator and tropics would get too hot. The poles would get too cold. While deep water currents do play a part in energy transfer, this is mainly done by surface currents. These are currents in the top 100 meters of the ocean. Their main driving force is the wind. They flow quickly and form giant circles. One example is the ntarctic ircumpolar urrent, which forms a giant ring around the continent of ntarctica. 3 urrents also cycle nutrients through the ocean. Water near the surface is rich in oxygen. eep waters are rich in nutrients. When sea creatures die, they sink to the ocean bed. They decay and release nutrients into the deep water. There must be a way to mix and exchange the two. In fact, there is a slow global deep water current. Wallace roecker is a noted oceanographer. roecker named this the ocean conveyor belt. 4 eep ocean currents are caused by thermohaline circulation. What does this mean? Well, thermo- means temperature. nd -haline means salt. ut how do temperature and salt cause currents? The linking factor is density. 5 ensity is a physical property of all materials. It is the measure of how much mass the material has for a standard particular volume, generally 1 cm 3. Whether something sinks or floats on a liquid is based on its density. more dense substance, either liquid or solid, will sink to the bottom. less dense substance will be found on the top. Water is more dense as a liquid than as a solid. This is why ice floats. Liquid water can vary in density. s long as it remains a liquid, water gets more dense as it gets colder. lso, water s properties change based on how much salt is dissolved in it. The measure of salt in a water sample is called salinity. Water gets more dense as its salinity goes up. 1

2 6E3 Earth s Water 6 There are three special places on Earth where conditions are right to pump the ocean conveyor belt. Two are in the North tlantic Ocean. The other is the Weddell Sea off the coast of ntarctica. ll three locations lie near either the north or south rctic ircle. On the map at the top of this passage, these locations are labeled deep water formation. onditions are right in these places to make water very, very dense. It will sink to the bottom of the ocean. ut how does this happen? We will focus on the Weddell Sea for the answer. Remember that a similar process happens in the North tlantic to form deep water. 7 uring the winter months, air temperatures in ntarctica are very cold. reas surrounding ntarctica get very little sunlight for much of the winter. Moving closer to the South Pole, some areas get no sunlight at all for weeks. Very cold winds from the interior of the ntarctic continent blow away from the South Pole. t the Weddell Sea, local geography funnels these winds over the surface of the water. The Weddell Sea is fringed year round by ice sheets. onditions are much colder in the winter. Sheets of ice form rapidly. Much of the sea has seasonal ice coverage. This rapid ice formation is one piece of the puzzle. The strong icy winds are another. 8 When ice forms from salt water, an interesting thing happens. The ice that forms is pure water. The salt gets left behind. (This works as long as some of the water remains liquid.) In the Weddell Sea, there is rapid formation of lots of pack ice. Much of the salt is left behind. This leads to water with very high salinity. There is another interesting property of water. s the salinity of a water sample goes up, its freezing point goes down. This means that very salty water will stay liquid below the freezing point of fresh water. The icy winds cool the water, often to -1 (30 F). The winds turn this high salinity water into the coldest, densest water in Earth s oceans. It sinks. This forms the ntarctic ottom Water. The other two locations form slightly less dense North tlantic eep Water. 9 The sinking of the newly formed deep water pushes the water from previous years. This drives the slowly moving ocean conveyor belt. The ntarctic ottom Water forms a current that travels around the continent of ntarctica. The North tlantic eep Water slowly creeps south to join these currents. Portions of the giant current break off. They travel along the bottom of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. The deep currents are shown in blue in the image at the top of this passage. Finally, they will return to the surface. These upwellings bring nutrients up to replenish surface water. Scientists think deep water may take between 600 and 1,000 years to return to the surface. 2

3 6E3 Earth s Water 1 What is the driving force of the deep water ocean conveyor belt? Winds push the deep water into the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Gravity from the Moon pulls the deep water toward the equator. The spinning of the Earth makes the deep water current run in circular paths. Very cold temperatures create very dense water that pushes the deep current along. 2 What is the meaning of circumpolar in paragraph 2? ircular path around the pole Wind-blown current old and salty Sinking 3

4 6E3 Earth s Water Examine the map below. Use it to answer questions 3 and 4. 3 ased on the information in the passage, which location on the map above marks the Weddell Sea? 4 Which location on the map above is a source of North tlantic eep Water? 4

5 6E3 Earth s Water 5 Which of these characteristics will produce the most dense water? High salinity, high temperature High salinity, low temperature Low salinity, high temperature Low salinity, low temperature 5

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