Speaker 1: All right, everyone, Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 2: Here on a wonderful sunny Saturday afternoon, everywhere I can
Speaker 2: forecast into the future and guarantee that wherever you are
Speaker 2: right now, it is a lovely, wonderful Saturday afternoon. This
Speaker 2: one harkens back to June fourth, twenty fifteen, which was
Speaker 2: also a lovely sunny day, but probably just a Tuesday
Speaker 2: or a Thursday. This one is how ocean currents work,
Speaker 2: and it was super fascinating.
Speaker 1: Never knew anything about.
Speaker 2: It, and now I do, and now you do too.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 3: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Speaker 3: Chuck Bryant, and Jerry And this is stuff you should know,
Speaker 3: the one about ocean currents.
Speaker 1: We should start titling our episodes like Friends did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one where Ross talks about ocean current Yeah, the.
Speaker 1: One where Chuck's eyes glazed over.
Speaker 3: I love this stuff, man, Yeah, Like Earth's science really
Speaker 3: gets me jazzed. That's good, it really does. Like it's
Speaker 3: so like it's very detailed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot to it.
Speaker 3: It's often oversimplified, but it's also very understandable, and when
Speaker 3: you really like learn about it, you realize what an
Speaker 3: elegant system the whole thing is. Sure, maybe not necessarily
Speaker 3: a living organism, but I could see how someone would
Speaker 3: characterize it as such.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that. It's good intro.
Speaker 3: That's what I got.
Speaker 2: So, yes, title ocean currents, well, not title, that's part
Speaker 2: of the ocean currency.
Speaker 3: It's a type of current. Yeah, it's under the current umbrella.
Speaker 1: I've misspoken in the first ten seconds.
Speaker 3: I think it's funny that in this article the word
Speaker 3: current refers to the motion of water when speaking of water.
Speaker 1: Is that what it says?
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of water. Yea, the word current refers to
Speaker 2: the motion of the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a little clumsy Miriam's defines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, this is about ocean currents. There are all
Speaker 2: kinds of currents, river currents, yeah, you know, there's currents
Speaker 2: in marshes and swamps and currents all over the place.
Speaker 1: But this is about ocean currents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as long as water's not stagnant, there's currents present.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If it's stagnant, it's bad news. Jack mosquitoes disease.
Speaker 3: Sure, but then again, junk you can make the case
Speaker 3: that if it's not stagnant, if there's a current, it'll
Speaker 3: carry your car away in the blink of an eye.
Speaker 3: Don't even think about it.
Speaker 2: Boy, did you see the photos of the Downtown Connector
Speaker 2: the other day in Atlanta when it flooded. No, apparently
Speaker 2: the storm drains backed up in the downtown Connector of
Speaker 2: Atlanta was a lake.
Speaker 1: Wow, Like it literally stopped traffic.
Speaker 3: I can believe that. Yeah, people in Atlanta don't know
Speaker 3: how to drive in the rain to begin with.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know about that really. Yeah, that's all
Speaker 2: we do is driving the rain. Man, people in La
Speaker 2: don't drive in the rain.
Speaker 3: Seems to me like everybody's brain just drops a couple
Speaker 3: of years when rain starts, and everyone starts like bumping
Speaker 3: into everybody else and like driving it two miles an
Speaker 3: hour and.
Speaker 1: You just like pedal through the metal. Yeah, what's different?
Speaker 3: All the time? I got good tires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, looks as you like tire stores.
Speaker 3: I don't like tires stores, but I'm willing to spend
Speaker 3: time there to get good tires.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That move water away from my car so I can
Speaker 3: drive really fast no matter what the weather.
Speaker 1: You should start your retireble on.
Speaker 3: I want to point out Jerry just sighed heavily at
Speaker 3: this tangent.
Speaker 2: I think your retirement business should be Josh's Tire House Emporium. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then have a really sweet setup. We'd be like
Speaker 2: buying tires here is like no place else on earth.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you got Wi Fi. You got a coffee machine.
Speaker 3: Well there's coffee.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I mean resta.
Speaker 2: Oh gotcha, like a you know, a little mini Starbucks
Speaker 2: right there in your tires. Sure, games have icebreakers, meet
Speaker 2: and greets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could serve icebreakers, gum too.
Speaker 1: You have tender tender day.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know else, I don't know, that's all I got.
Speaker 3: Aroma therapy would be good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be a big one massage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, that's my it's my plan. B all right,
Speaker 3: Josh's tire Warehouse and Porium, I think is what we
Speaker 3: came up with.
Speaker 2: Sure, Josh's big House of tires or house of big tires.
Speaker 3: Okay, So ocean currents, we're back to it. So one
Speaker 3: of the things that I did not realize, Chuck, when
Speaker 3: researching this is that ocean currents they're they're old, but
Speaker 3: there they aren't permanent. They haven't always been around. Yeah,
Speaker 3: currents change, you know, some currents have been at it
Speaker 3: for thousands and thousands of years. Other currents change months
Speaker 3: and month. They're very fickle in some cases. But there
Speaker 3: are some really ancient currents, some ancient ocean currents out
Speaker 3: there that are very old and have been this way since,
Speaker 3: say like like the Gulf Stream has been around for
Speaker 3: about five million years, ever since the Isthmus of Panama. Yeah,
Speaker 3: pretty cool stuff, huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think what I found the most interesting was that
Speaker 2: ocean currents they have a purpose. You know, it's not
Speaker 2: just like water moving around willy nilly. You know, if
Speaker 2: it wasn't for ocean currents, there would be no life
Speaker 2: in Antarctica. Well maybe not all of Antarctica, but no
Speaker 2: ocean marine life.
Speaker 1: They make that possible.
Speaker 3: But that's an important point. Like if there's no ocean
Speaker 3: marine life, then there's no like say there's no fido plankton. Sure,
Speaker 3: there's no fital plankton. There's no fishies eating the fyto plankton.
Speaker 3: There's no fishies around to eat the fyto plankton. There's
Speaker 3: no seals to eat the fishies. If there's no seals,
Speaker 3: like everything finds its support, its basis in that ocean life. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: that's all supported by the currents.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: So the fact that as purpose, it's very teleological of you, chuck,
Speaker 3: thank you. So let's not put this off any longer.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about different types of currents.
Speaker 1: You can't talk about tire stores anymore.
Speaker 3: No, Okay, we're done with the tire stores. Like I
Speaker 3: started to get nauseated just talking that much about tire stores.
Speaker 1: Oh really, all right, I don't feel good.
Speaker 2: Well let's start with surface currents then, buddy, I'll bring
Speaker 2: you back to the ocean. Earth science, your home, Earth
Speaker 2: sciences that you love. Surface currents occur about three to
Speaker 2: four hundred meters deep and above.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're called surface.
Speaker 3: Currents, right, and they're driven by the wind.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They make up for about ten percent of the ocean.
Speaker 2: And if you've ever gone to the beach, you've seen
Speaker 2: coastal currents.
Speaker 1: Surface currents. There's a couple of types. Coastal is one
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: You've seen them in action, right, like playing in the
Speaker 2: sand as a little kid or as an adult. You're
Speaker 2: seeing coastal surface currents at work.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So let's step back one more degree. So service. Currents
Speaker 3: are created by wave.
Speaker 1: Action, that's right.
Speaker 3: Especially coastal currents are created by wave action, which is
Speaker 3: created by wind. Waves are created by wind. And you
Speaker 3: know Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome, among
Speaker 3: other great things. Sure he was the person who pointed
Speaker 3: out that the wind doesn't blow, the wind sucks. That's
Speaker 3: a good point, right, So and so if coastal currents
Speaker 3: begin with waves, waves begin with wind. Wind begins with
Speaker 3: heat because at the equator you have a lot of
Speaker 3: sunshine all year round and it's very warm, as anyone
Speaker 3: who's been near the equator can attest. And that heat
Speaker 3: heats up air. And as the air heats up, it
Speaker 3: moves away from the equator. It's like, I gotta go
Speaker 3: cool off. It moves towards the poles north end south
Speaker 3: and as it moves toward the poles, it cools down
Speaker 3: and turns. Background is like I need to heap back
Speaker 3: up at the equator. Yeah, right, And as a result
Speaker 3: of this, you have wind. And this wind, yeah, pushes
Speaker 3: on the surface of the water, transfers some of its
Speaker 3: energy in the form of friction to the water surface,
Speaker 3: and creates waves. And those waves transfer the energy to
Speaker 3: the shoreline, and when they come in in an angle,
Speaker 3: that's when you get that coastal current. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if you've again, if you've ever been to
Speaker 2: the beach and you see the tide or the waves
Speaker 2: coming in at that angle, and you see it moving
Speaker 2: with the beach, Like if you've ever been out playing
Speaker 2: on like a raft as a little kid, you look
Speaker 2: up an hour later and your parents are like half
Speaker 2: a mile down the beach from where you start, right.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a panicky situation.
Speaker 3: It is. And also you're like, what kind of parents
Speaker 3: do I have that they just let me drift half
Speaker 3: a mile?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, they're passed out in the sand at
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that is called.
Speaker 2: When a wave breaks on the beach at that angle,
Speaker 2: it's gonna pull sediment and sand and water down in
Speaker 2: what's known as a long shore current. That is it's
Speaker 2: directed off parallel, also perpendicular, but the parallel movement is
Speaker 2: the long shore current.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's like when a wave comes in in an
Speaker 3: angle to the shore, Yep, it distributes its energy, part
Speaker 3: of it directly onto the shore, part of it parallel
Speaker 3: to the shore. That's that long short current, like you said,
Speaker 3: and one of the things that it does you also said,
Speaker 3: is it takes that sand and other stuff and deposits
Speaker 3: it elsewhere further down and along the way. It creates
Speaker 3: things like barrier islands and sand bars and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: And that's ever shifting, ever moving, eroding and depositing of
Speaker 3: sand and sediment, and those little underwater and sometimes above
Speaker 3: water deposits create other types of current, specifically a riptide current.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the long shore drift.
Speaker 2: And like, if you've ever seen like the beach curve
Speaker 2: back end pretty hard. The water can't make that turn really,
Speaker 2: so it's just gonna deposit stuff and sort of drop
Speaker 2: it off there at the end of that point, and
Speaker 2: it'll build up in what's known as a.
Speaker 3: Spit, right, And so yeah, all those obstructions, all of
Speaker 3: those deposits form obstructions for waves when they're going back out.
Speaker 3: Once they transfer their energy, they're like, oh, I'm pretty
Speaker 3: far inland. I need to get back out the ocean.
Speaker 3: And so it backs up right, and as it does,
Speaker 3: it encounters these underwater barriers that it itself have deposited.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a big ironic moment, and so it
Speaker 3: can't get back out to see as fast as it
Speaker 3: wants because it's running in these obstructions. And when there's
Speaker 3: like a break in the obstruction, like a sandbar or
Speaker 3: something like that, a break in the sandbar, it provides
Speaker 3: a natural funnel and that creates a riptide current.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, hey, look at that little narrow channel. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take all this water that would normally just flow
Speaker 2: out and I and easy, I'm going to send it
Speaker 2: through there, and I'm gonna grab your little kid and
Speaker 2: take it, take them.
Speaker 3: With me, right this It creates basically suction, just like
Speaker 3: when you open a drain in a bathtub and it
Speaker 3: starts to drain, it drains pretty quick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's dangerous, like that's how you drown when you're
Speaker 2: swimming in the ocean.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You hear about strong rip currents and inclement weather, and
Speaker 2: it's no joke. Even really good swimmers can get caught
Speaker 2: in a rip. Oh yeah, And it's bad news.
Speaker 3: Riptide, very bad news. Yeah. And then there's some other
Speaker 3: currents that are created that don't just occur at the
Speaker 3: at the shore, but they do. They occur in the
Speaker 3: ocean and at the shore. Yeah, there's this thing called upwelling. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like this stuff and upwelling can happen in a few
Speaker 3: different ways, but as far as the coast is concerned,
Speaker 3: when wind comes in and it basically blows water away
Speaker 3: from an area, yeah, like from the shore, right, water
Speaker 3: likes to try to even itself out. So it's some
Speaker 3: water's blown away from the surface, the stuff that's below it,
Speaker 3: the deeper water will come up and basically replace it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's upwelling.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's another like what strikes me when you look at
Speaker 2: wind and all these currents, everything is circular almost.
Speaker 1: Right, so a lot of spinning going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a really distinct relationship between wind and water.
Speaker 3: It's inseparable, especially when you're talking about global winds and
Speaker 3: currents together, right, Yeah, but both of them are broken
Speaker 3: down to fluid dynamics, and they do form these circles
Speaker 3: and cycles and clockwise motions and counterclockwise motions depending on
Speaker 3: where you are in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in the case of upwelling and down welling,
Speaker 2: it's not a horizontal spin, but it is a vertical
Speaker 2: from top to bottom and then from bottom back up
Speaker 2: to the top.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you want to talk about that was which one.
Speaker 2: Well both, it's the same pattern from top to bottom
Speaker 2: and bottom to top with upwelling and down welling.
Speaker 3: Right. And the whole thing about upwelling and down welling,
Speaker 3: whether it's at the shore or in the ocean, is
Speaker 3: that the ocean is kind of It's not like if
Speaker 3: you take a slice of ocean at the top and
Speaker 3: you take a slice of ocean at the bottom, very
Speaker 3: different and you look at them, yeah, under a microscope
Speaker 3: or test them for whatever, you know, using some sort
Speaker 3: of spectroscope, maybe some sort of oscillate or glavin or
Speaker 3: something like that, or just look at it. Yeah, you're
Speaker 3: going to find that there's it's like two different types
Speaker 3: of water, even though it's from the same part. It's
Speaker 3: from the same section of ocean, right, Yeah, And the
Speaker 3: stuff at the top is going to be very oxygen rich.
Speaker 3: There's going to be a lot of life, vital plant
Speaker 3: and that kind of stuff, but not too many nutrients.
Speaker 3: The stuff at the bottom is going to be lousy
Speaker 3: with CO two yeah, cold, yeah, very cold, and a
Speaker 3: lot of nutrients. Right, And when both of these things
Speaker 3: are needed at different spots. Yeah, So the upwelling and
Speaker 3: the down welling creates this kind of gas exchange, in
Speaker 3: nutrient exchange throughout the ocean, and the oxygen at the
Speaker 3: top when it's deposited down lower. Thanks to down welling,
Speaker 3: all of that oxygen circulates downward through the ocean and
Speaker 3: all the fishies that need oxygen in their gills get
Speaker 3: to breathe it in, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And with upwelling, like I mentioned earlier in Antarctica
Speaker 2: where it's super cold and you would not expect marine
Speaker 2: life to do so well, it is because of the
Speaker 2: upwelling that brings the nutrients from the bottom up to
Speaker 2: the top.
Speaker 1: Yep, and that cycle and that's called life.
Speaker 3: And one other really neat thing about upwelling and downwelling
Speaker 3: is the oxygen that's at the top of the ocean.
Speaker 3: Were it to just sit there for very long and dissolve,
Speaker 3: we would have a very big problem because all of
Speaker 3: that life, once it dies, would decay very quickly up top.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's not good.
Speaker 3: No, it wouldn't because anaerobic bacteria would begin to thrive
Speaker 3: and we'd have a overabundance of hydrogen sulfide, which would
Speaker 3: lead to ocean acidification, which would mean the end of
Speaker 3: the world basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that nutrient swap is very important for everybody
Speaker 2: on the planet.
Speaker 3: Yep. And there's this elegant solution to the oceans that
Speaker 3: happens every day everywhere in the ocean thanks to upwelling
Speaker 3: and downwelling.
Speaker 2: All right, well it's a good start, my friend. My
Speaker 2: eyes are not glazed over. Actually good, they're sharp, full
Speaker 2: of life. We will talk after this break about some
Speaker 2: more surface currents. All right, Josh, there's more than one
Speaker 2: kind of surface current. We covered the I kind of
Speaker 2: like that first part, but there's also surface ocean currents.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And again the wind is the big contribute to how
Speaker 2: these babies form, and specifically, I guess we should talk
Speaker 2: about the Coriolis effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a this is a game changer, as
Speaker 3: people who read self help books on airplanes would call it. Right.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so again, it all starts with heat, and
Speaker 3: all that heat is found in its thickest part at
Speaker 3: the equator. And my brain is broken. So at the
Speaker 3: equator it's the hottest, right.
Speaker 1: That's right. And it's also also spinning faster at the
Speaker 1: equator than at.
Speaker 3: The poles, right it is, Okay, So it's the Earth
Speaker 3: that is Yeah, So at the equator it's hot, it's
Speaker 3: spinning faster because of the spin. Because of the heat.
Speaker 3: The ocean is actually about eight centimeters high, higher here
Speaker 3: than at the rest of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so much higher.
Speaker 3: So there's a right, it's just enough to make water
Speaker 3: flow away from the equator. Now, plus you've got wind
Speaker 3: that's whipped up because hot air at the equator starts
Speaker 3: moving northward and cools down and that creates wind. Right,
Speaker 3: So if the Earth didn't rotate, you would still have
Speaker 3: these things, but wind would travel in a straight line
Speaker 3: away from the equator toward the poles, cool down and
Speaker 3: turn around and come back in a straight line.
Speaker 1: That's right. But that's not the case.
Speaker 3: No, it isn't because the Earth does rotate and it
Speaker 3: produces the Coriolis effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a curve.
Speaker 2: Basically, it curves to the right and the northern hemisphere
Speaker 2: and to the left in the southern hemisphere.
Speaker 3: Right, So it makes wind curve, and since wind drives
Speaker 3: surface currents, it makes surface currents curve as well. Right,
Speaker 3: that's right. So what's really cool is the ocean has
Speaker 3: its own topography. Oh yeah, it's definitely not flat. Anybody
Speaker 3: who's looked at it ice, you could be like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's pretty choppy. But if you could step back even
Speaker 3: further and you had the right kind of topographical glasses on,
Speaker 3: maybe yeah, you would see that there's like valleys and
Speaker 3: and mountains, and maybe not mountains, but little tiny hills
Speaker 3: and valleys in the ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, like I said, it has its own topography. And
Speaker 3: this is created by those winds that push on the water.
Speaker 3: And as they're pushing the water up and the Coriolis
Speaker 3: effect is turning it, some water starts to kind of mound.
Speaker 3: So in some parts of the ocean you have water
Speaker 3: that forms a mound that's about like three to six
Speaker 3: feet tall.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It doesn't sound intuitive, No, I don't water mounting
Speaker 2: up on itself.
Speaker 3: You think of it as flat. Yeah, but there is
Speaker 3: actually water that's mounded up into little hills. Yeah okay.
Speaker 3: And so that means that gravity wants to push this
Speaker 3: water downward, right, But it doesn't just go back down
Speaker 3: the hill, because the Coriolis effect pushes it upward. And
Speaker 3: the net outcome is that instead the water just says,
Speaker 3: how about it just go around instead? Yeah, you stay
Speaker 3: up here on the mound, you stay down here. But
Speaker 3: I am going to just go around. And what it
Speaker 3: does is, since a mound is roughly circular, it creates
Speaker 3: a current that goes around these things, around these mounds.
Speaker 3: And there's five major ones in the entire world I
Speaker 3: know where you're headed at, and they form what are
Speaker 3: called gyres.
Speaker 2: That's right, g y r e s and they are
Speaker 2: the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and
Speaker 2: then the Indian Ocean has its very own gyre. Yes,
Speaker 2: there were smaller ones around Antarctica, but those are the
Speaker 2: five major gyres.
Speaker 1: We talked about the Gulf Stream earlier.
Speaker 2: That is a part of the North Atlantic gyre, and
Speaker 2: it carries forty five hundred times the water of the
Speaker 2: entire Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Gulf Stream does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Gulf Stream is.
Speaker 1: The hero of all gyres.
Speaker 3: It is it moves. Let me see, I've got to
Speaker 3: find this one because this is so amazing. So the
Speaker 3: Gulf Stream, at any given point, it moves water at
Speaker 3: a rate of fifteen superdomes worth per second. So you
Speaker 3: remember the superdome in Louisiana. Yes, sure, say you filled
Speaker 3: it with water, okay, and then you took that but
Speaker 3: copied it fifteen fourteen more times h So you have
Speaker 3: fifteen super domes full of water. That's how much water
Speaker 3: passes through any given point per second. Okay in the
Speaker 3: Gulf Stream, all right, that's a lot of water.
Speaker 1: How many big max is that it's trillions of big macs,
Speaker 1: billions and billions served.
Speaker 3: But the Gulf Stream itself is actually it's technically the
Speaker 3: western boundary current of the North Atlantic Gyre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's going to carry warm water. It has
Speaker 1: a big impact in the world.
Speaker 2: It's gonna carry warm water up north from the Gulf
Speaker 2: of Mexico. And that's why if you're living on the
Speaker 2: east coast of Florida, you're gonna have cooler summers and
Speaker 2: warmer winters. Western Europe is going to be a lot
Speaker 2: warm than other places on its exact same latitude. And
Speaker 2: this is all because of the Gulf Stream.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You can deposit bodies in it if you're a dexter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and those things are gonna yep, see a later body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll probably get carried to England and they'll be
Speaker 3: like blind, he what was this? So that's just the
Speaker 3: Gulf Stream. There's actually at least four major currents that
Speaker 3: form the boundary currents of the North Atlantic Gyre. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then the North Atlantic Gyre is just one. We've
Speaker 3: also talked about gyres before with the Great Pacific garbage Patch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we covered did we do waves or did we
Speaker 1: just do We did waves.
Speaker 3: We did rogue waves too, but we covered waves and surfing.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, remember that.
Speaker 3: But these these boundary currents are created again in part
Speaker 3: by the winds flowing away from the equator, the Coriolis effect,
Speaker 3: turning the waves and the mounds of water circulating the
Speaker 3: waves in it around them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you've got these like just clockwise or counterclock depending
Speaker 3: on which hems for you, are currents that are just
Speaker 3: massive that move water around and again they cycle nutrients.
Speaker 3: Like you said, they affect the weather, yeah, because they
Speaker 3: deposit warm water from the south up to all the
Speaker 3: way up to England apparently. So you know, England is
Speaker 3: on the same latitude as like some glacial parts of Canada. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes sense, but their winners are like nothing compared
Speaker 3: to that, you know, thank you Ocean. Same thing as
Speaker 3: a Bermuda is very temperate, it has very nice climate,
Speaker 3: and it's on the same latitude as North Carolina. Which
Speaker 3: is you know, it can get kind of cold there.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, sure, that's all thanks to the Gulf Stream.
Speaker 1: Thank you Gulf Stream.
Speaker 3: And if you want to thank the Gulf Stream, Chuck,
Speaker 3: you can thank Ben Franklin because he's the one who
Speaker 3: named it.
Speaker 1: Oh really.
Speaker 3: Yeah. As the first Postmaster General of the United States,
Speaker 3: he wanted to figure out why mail took so many
Speaker 3: more weeks longer to get from England to the US
Speaker 3: than it did from the US to England.
Speaker 1: Because they're going against traffic exactly.
Speaker 3: But he didn't know that, and he found out and
Speaker 3: he took some measurements and roughly charted the golf stream
Speaker 3: back in the eighteenth century.
Speaker 2: Man, he was a smart dude, he really was. That's
Speaker 2: pretty amazing. Yeah, I didn't know he dabbled in oceanography.
Speaker 3: But again, the golf stream amazing. And it's just one
Speaker 3: boundary current of one major gyre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of a hypnotic if you look at
Speaker 2: these motion maps of global motion maps of like trade
Speaker 2: winds and ocean currents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could watch those videos all day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just stuff spinning around and like traveling around,
Speaker 2: and it's really it's soothing.
Speaker 3: And especially when they do like heat gradients or topographical gradients.
Speaker 3: So it's really colorful too, and it's ever shifting. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: you can just get a little jewel out of the
Speaker 3: corner of my mouth when I watch though.
Speaker 1: It's about as good as watching Fantasia.
Speaker 3: There's one other thing we should say about those surf
Speaker 3: currents is they drag on the water below them, right,
Speaker 3: So the wind is transferring its energy to the surface
Speaker 3: of the water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it drags a little bit less is the
Speaker 1: deeper you go, right?
Speaker 3: Apparently though the current that the motion of water usually
Speaker 3: goes in opposition to the motion of wind. So what
Speaker 3: you end up having if you could take a column
Speaker 3: slice from top to bottom of the ocean, you would
Speaker 3: find that the water ultimately is making a very long
Speaker 3: downward spiral. Yeah, and that's called the Ekman spiral.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That there's a graphic of that that looks pretty neat
Speaker 2: as well, pretty neat again, mesmerizing stuff, So Chuck.
Speaker 3: After this we will talk about the global conveyor belt.
Speaker 2: That's my favorite part, I think, okay, Ken, all right,
Speaker 2: my favorite part of ocean currency ocean currents. It works
Speaker 2: the deep ocean current aka the global conveyor belt.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: If you're talking about this is about ninety percent, if
Speaker 2: the surface currents are about ten percent, about ninety percent
Speaker 2: of the ocean's water is part of the deep ocean current,
Speaker 2: and we can't see it because we're up here on
Speaker 2: Earth and we are not deep under the water. It's
Speaker 2: invisible to us, right, But it circles the globe at
Speaker 2: afore sixteen times as strong as all of the world's
Speaker 2: rivers combined.
Speaker 3: Which is again still not as much as the the
Speaker 3: Gulf Stream. Yeah, still pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: It's pretty impressive. Yeah, but it's slow, so like water.
Speaker 3: It moves super water a few centimeters a second, whereas
Speaker 3: the Gulf Stream moves waters at like a couple hundred
Speaker 3: centimeters a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the conveyor belt, they said, like one patch
Speaker 2: will take a thousand years to completely around, yeah, the circuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it takes ten years for water to make
Speaker 3: a full circuit on the North Atlantic Gyre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so ten years yeah, and then a thousand years
Speaker 2: right wow. Yeah, So the global conveyor belt, it is
Speaker 2: driven by density, which I think is pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because up to this point it's all been driven
Speaker 3: by wind, which is ultimately driven by heat. This is
Speaker 3: also driven by heat in a way, but in a
Speaker 3: completely different way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, heat and salt thermohaline circulation, the thermo being heat
Speaker 2: and haleine being salt.
Speaker 1: Warm water holds less salt.
Speaker 2: So what happens is like, let's say you're in the
Speaker 2: Antarctic and water freezes to form an iceberg or water
Speaker 2: evaporates either way, salt is not going to be a
Speaker 2: part of that equation.
Speaker 3: No, the salt is left behind as Yeah, water freezes,
Speaker 3: and you know icebergs aren't salty their fresh water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the salt is left behind. It's got to
Speaker 2: go somewhere. It is going to be very dense at
Speaker 2: that point. So it is going to be cold and
Speaker 2: dense and sink to the ocean floor.
Speaker 3: Right. So remember back when we're talking about right, and
Speaker 3: we were talking about coastal coastal currents and up welling
Speaker 3: and down welling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this plays a part.
Speaker 3: When water sinks, other water moves in to replace it.
Speaker 3: And so what starts off here and this actually I
Speaker 3: think starts around the North Pole definitely in the North Atlantic.
Speaker 3: As that water sinks and moves downward, it creates. It
Speaker 3: starts this current that goes all the way around the
Speaker 3: world and again takes a thousand years to complete.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just kick starts it basically.
Speaker 2: And it's called the conveyor belt, I think because it
Speaker 2: never stops moving and it's super slow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I kept getting that, remember that whatever that Bugs
Speaker 3: Bunny assembly line song? Like it was always the same.
Speaker 1: Like, dude, don't remember that.
Speaker 3: I can't remember it either. Now I have our theme
Speaker 3: song in my head. I'm trying to think about it.
Speaker 3: But there's like anytime Bugs Bunny messed around on a
Speaker 3: conveyor bell or something, they use the same like composition.
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, I'll try to find it all right.
Speaker 2: So, once this water hits Antarctica, basically the same thing
Speaker 2: happens all over again. The cold water is gonna split.
Speaker 2: Some of it heads to the Indian Ocean, some heads
Speaker 2: to the Pacific, and this upwelling and down welling, this
Speaker 2: cycle just starts all over again.
Speaker 3: Yeah. As it moves closer to like the Indian Ocean
Speaker 3: and the Pacific, it gets closer to the equator, the
Speaker 3: water starts to warm up, it loses some of its salinity,
Speaker 3: it starts to thin out a little bit, and so
Speaker 3: it rises, and when it does, it takes all those
Speaker 3: nutrients and all that CO two up with it. And
Speaker 3: it's very much like the gas exchange that occurs in
Speaker 3: the human cardio pulmonary system. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not homeostasis, but it almost feels like that.
Speaker 3: If you took the whole system overall. Yeah, it's homeostatic
Speaker 3: for sure, but it's like that by this exchange, this
Speaker 3: transfer from one part to another, from the deep ocean
Speaker 3: to the surface. And this as it reaches the surface
Speaker 3: and it depletes its nutrients, it's carried back around. It
Speaker 3: basically tries to go up hits Alaska, Russia, Asia, North Asia,
Speaker 3: Northeast Asia, and turns back around and goes ends up
Speaker 3: finally back in the North Atlantic, up near the North Pole.
Speaker 1: And gets cold and starts all over.
Speaker 3: Right, And by the time it gets there, it's basically
Speaker 3: nutrient depleted and it sinks and it starts to recharge again.
Speaker 1: That's right in that just like blood.
Speaker 3: In your in your cardiopulmonary system, it gets depleted, it
Speaker 3: ends up going past the lungs, it transfers out CO two,
Speaker 3: it gets in oxygen. This is just the opposite. This
Speaker 3: is transferring out oxygen and gaining CO two and nutrients.
Speaker 2: Way to feel connected to the Earth when you start
Speaker 2: looking at things like that, you know, yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: so different.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, we're all connected, man.
Speaker 2: And again there's a big nutrient swap meat happening as
Speaker 2: well with the conveyor belt like we're talking about, and
Speaker 2: basically kind of has the same effect as those surface
Speaker 2: currents do. Yeah, as far as exchanging the oxygen and
Speaker 2: the CO two and nutrients and just moving everything where
Speaker 2: it needs to be.
Speaker 3: I thought this was pretty cool. In this article it
Speaker 3: talks about there's also a density driven to Thermohalian current
Speaker 3: in the Mediterranean because the Mediterranean is apparently saltier than
Speaker 3: the Atlantic, and as a result this gradient. Anytime you
Speaker 3: have a difference in something, whether it's height, temperature, salinity, density,
Speaker 3: homeostasis is the ultimate goal, so it's going to try
Speaker 3: to go toward the middle, from higher to lower. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and this is the same thing. So it creates that
Speaker 3: oceanic current. And apparently in World War two, subs would
Speaker 3: run silent by going in and out of the Mediterranean
Speaker 3: without their engines on, just using that current.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, so they would run like a glider.
Speaker 1: Deep run, silent run deep exactly. Wow, that's frightening. All right.
Speaker 1: Are we at tidal currents?
Speaker 3: You don't have to be frightened. It was years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're at tidal currents.
Speaker 1: I think they still do that.
Speaker 3: No, there's no submarines anymore. We haven't been at war
Speaker 3: for years.
Speaker 1: They retired all the submarines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. Tidal currents are generated by the tides.
Speaker 2: We did talk about, like we said, I think in
Speaker 2: the Rugue waves and surfing about tides and waves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: The gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, but
Speaker 2: more of the Moon because the Moon is closer, Yeah,
Speaker 2: is what's gonna cause that bulge on the sides, and
Speaker 2: it's going to drive the water level at that bulge. Basically,
Speaker 2: it's going to decrease. It's going to increase where it's
Speaker 2: aligned with the moon and decrease at the halfway point
Speaker 2: between those two places.
Speaker 3: Right, and so, And it's always changing because the moon,
Speaker 3: the position of the Moon and the Sun and the
Speaker 3: Earth are always changing, but they change in a very
Speaker 3: predictable manner. So we can predict when the tides happen.
Speaker 3: But if you just took a snapshot at any given
Speaker 3: point of the tidal effect, right. And if you imagine
Speaker 3: that the moon is on one side, the Sun is
Speaker 3: on one side, and the Earth is on the middle,
Speaker 3: the world's oceans around the Earth stretch out on the sides,
Speaker 3: and because of that gravitational pull, and just imagine that
Speaker 3: it's always like that. It's always just this elliptical oval
Speaker 3: shape the world's oceans are and then the Earth, the
Speaker 3: dry Earth, is spinning within that and so the land
Speaker 3: masses on the Earth are always coming in and out
Speaker 3: of that bulge, and so they're going from higher to
Speaker 3: lower tide. It's kind of it just makes it easier
Speaker 3: for me, rather than to think of the oceans moving
Speaker 3: around the Earth, to think of the Earth spinning within
Speaker 3: the ocean, and that causes the change in tides.
Speaker 1: That does something for you.
Speaker 3: Does it all the way?
Speaker 2: And these are different than the other currents who talked
Speaker 2: about because they're not it's not a continuous stream and
Speaker 2: they switch directions. That's the high tide and low tide
Speaker 2: and it doesn't impact like the ocean.
Speaker 1: Current that much. It's shoreline stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's pretty important. I mean, like fish, fishes
Speaker 3: lay eggs, and sure low tide will pull those eggs
Speaker 3: out into the open ocean and those fitch they'll hatch.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It also brings food in from the ocean into like
Speaker 3: marshland that kind.
Speaker 1: Of stuff, yeah, or washes up jellyfish yep. And to
Speaker 1: delight the children on the beach.
Speaker 3: Yes, but don't touch them. You can just look.
Speaker 2: And when the tide is rising, that flow is directed
Speaker 2: toward the store.
Speaker 1: That's called the flood current.
Speaker 2: We've heard about that flood and the EBB, and the
Speaker 2: EBB is when it's directed back out to sea.
Speaker 1: That's right, and that makes it all very predictable.
Speaker 2: Like you said, we can go to the beach and
Speaker 2: listen to the tide report.
Speaker 1: That's also a very relaxing thing to do.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, listen to that like the am
Speaker 2: like fishing and charts and tidle reports.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very relaxing for me.
Speaker 3: I like it. I remember growing up listening to like
Speaker 3: grain future reports and hog reports.
Speaker 1: Oh really like that. Pork bellies, yeah, pork futures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, chuck, just a couple more things. So, like, there
Speaker 3: are plenty of other currents and there's also plenty of
Speaker 3: other wind patterns that drive these currents. They do things
Speaker 3: like create the El Nino, yeah, which basically takes weather,
Speaker 3: thunderstorms and stuff around the equator and move them in
Speaker 3: different places that we're not used to, which can lead
Speaker 3: to droughts and floods depending on where you are. And
Speaker 3: then also there's a lot of concern among scientists who
Speaker 3: are who know about this kind of stuff that changes.
Speaker 3: Climate change is going to ultimately and negatively affect the
Speaker 3: global conveyor belt because as the Earth warms up, more
Speaker 3: and more icebergs are gonna melt, creating much less salinity.
Speaker 3: And since the water will be less saline and warmer,
Speaker 3: it's going to sink less. And so that global conveyor
Speaker 3: belt that relies on cold, dense, salty water to sink
Speaker 3: to get it started, is going to slow. And that
Speaker 3: could be bad because remember it's all that's the global
Speaker 3: nutrient exchange. That wouldn't be good, No, because then the
Speaker 3: phytoplankton dies. And again when the phytoplankton dies, the fishies die,
Speaker 3: seals die.
Speaker 1: Polar bears are upset, well, the poor seals die. Either way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is very sad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got anything else, No, that's it. That's ocean currents.
Speaker 3: If you want to know more about ocean currents, you
Speaker 3: can type those words into the search bar at HowStuffWorks
Speaker 3: dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time
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