What is the upper ocean?
The upper ocean connects the surface forcing from winds, heat, and fresh water, with the quiescent deeper ocean where this heat and fresh water are sequestered and released on longer time and global scales.
What are the 3 parts of the ocean called?
The ocean has three main layers: the surface ocean, which is generally warm, and the deep ocean, which is colder and more dense than the surface ocean, and the seafloor sediments. The thermocline separates the surface from the deep ocean.
What are the 7 layers of the ocean?
The sunlight zone, the twilight zone, the midnight zone, the abyss and the trenches.
- Sunlight Zone. This zone extends from the surface down to about 700 feet.
- Twilight Zone. This zone extends from 700 feet down to about 3,280 feet.
- The Midnight Zone.
- The Abyssal Zone.
- The Trenches.
How deep is the upper ocean?
The upper ocean, characterized by warm temperatures and active motion, varies in depth from 100 m or less in the tropics and eastern oceans to in excess of 800 meters in the western subtropical oceans. This layer exchanges properties such as heat and freshwater with the atmosphere on timescales of a few years.
What is ocean stratification?
The ocean is stratified due to differences in density, with warmer, lighter, less salty water layering on top of heavier, colder, saltier water. Mixing between layers occurs as heat slowly seeps deeper into the ocean and by the action of current, winds, and tides.
What is the ocean bottom called?
seabed
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as ‘seabeds’.
What is the upper layer of the ocean called?
epipelagic zone
The top surface layer is called the epipelagic zone, and is sometimes referred to as the “ocean skin” or “sunlight zone.” This layer interacts with the wind and waves, which mixes the water and distributes the warmth.
What are the 5 zones of the ocean?
The ocean is divided into five zones: the epipelagic zone, or upper open ocean (surface to 650 feet deep); the mesopelagic zone, or middle open ocean (650-3,300 feet deep); the bathypelagic zone, or lower open ocean (3,300-13,000 feet deep); the abyssopelagic zone, or abyss (13,000-20,000 feet deep); and the …