HOW THE OCEAN CURRENTS DRIVE THE CLIMATE.

These flows would have appeared with the planet’s first oceans, around 4 billion to 4.5 billion years ago, spurred by the same forces that propel them today: winds, tides, global differences in temperature and saltiness, and the planet’s rotation. Ocean currents behave much like rivers within the larger bodies of water, according to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. They range in size from small currents near beaches to ocean-spanning flows, like the enormous gyres, or elliptical cycles, that snake between continents. For example, in the North Atlantic Gyre, water flows west along the equator, north past the U.S. East Coast in the Gulf Stream, back east along the Arctic, then south past Europe and Africa as the Canary Current.
Winds, powered by solar energy, direct surface currents, like those in gyres. Differences in temperature and saltiness between the equator and Earth’s poles power. Flows of water in Earth’s seas have guided navigators for centuries and shaped climates for much longer.

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