Western Intensification of Wind-Driven Gyres

Assembled from 17 blocks · 1 evidence · 15 related

1. Story
2. The reason every subtropical gyre on Earth has a fast, narrow current on its western side and nothing comparable on its eastern side. Henry Stommel showed in 1948 that if the Coriolis parameter is held constant the circulation is symmetric, and that letting it vary with latitude — the beta effect — crowds the return flow against the western boundary. The consequence is the Gulf Stream, the Kuroshio, the Agulhas and the Brazil Current: flows tens of kilometres wide moving at up to two metres per second, returning in a thin ribbon all the water the broad interior carries the other way.
3. Knowledge
4. North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre
5. Western Intensification of Wind-Driven Gyres
6. Connections
7. North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre
8. Gulf Stream
9. Kuroshio
10. Henry Stommel
11. Stommel explains why the fast currents are on the west
12. Ekman Transport and the Ekman Spiral
13. Western Intensification of Wind-Driven Gyres
14. Gulf Stream
15. Stommel explains why the fast currents are on the west
16. Evidence
17. Variation of the Coriolis parameter with latitude — the beta effect — crowds the return flow of a wind-driven gyre into a narrow, intense western boundary current; with a constant Coriolis parameter the circulation is symmetric. Located by citation and described from teaching notes and commemorative accounts; the 1948 paper was not fetched.