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What are the 5 areas of the ocean?
How many areas of the ocean are there?
What are the 4 parts of the world ocean?
How many oceans does Earth have?
- Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean covering more than 30% of the Earth. This is close to half of the water on Earth. It touches the west coast border of the Americas along with East Asia and Australia.
- Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean is situated between the Americas and European/African continents. The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest and saltiest ocean in the world.
- Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean surrounding a densely populated region. It contains an additional 20% of the water on Earth’s surface.
- Southern Ocean. In 2000, the Southern Ocean is the newest ocean recognized by the International Hydrographic Organization. It borders Antarctica in its entirety.
The following names describe five different areas of the ocean: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and Arctic. [10] [11] The ocean contains 97% of Earth's water [8] and is the primary component of Earth's hydrosphere, thus the ocean is essential to life on Earth.
Jun 28, 2019 · Geographers, for many years, divided the world ocean into four parts: the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans. In addition to these oceans, they also described many other smaller bodies of salt water including seas, bays, and estuaries.
- Amanda Briney
There are five oceans that cover around three-quarters of the planet, and they are all connected together: the Atlantic Ocean; the Pacific Ocean; the Indian Ocean; the Southern...
- Overview
- Relative distribution of the oceans
An ocean is a continuous body of salt water that is contained in an enormous basin on Earth’s surface. The major oceans and their marginal seas cover nearly 71 percent of Earth’s surface, with an average depth of 3,688 metres (12,100 feet).
What are the five oceans of Earth?
The five major oceans are the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Southern oceans.
Which is the largest ocean on the Earth?
The Pacific is the largest ocean in both surface area and volume. The Atlantic is the next largest, and the Arctic is the smallest.
How much of the water found on Earth exists in the oceans?
Earth possesses one “world ocean.” However, those conducting oceanic research generally recognize the existence of five major oceans: the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and Arctic oceans. Arbitrary boundaries separate these bodies of water, but they are largely defined by the continents that frame them. In the Southern Hemisphere, however, 60° S latitude, which corresponds to the approximate position of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, separates the Southern Ocean from the southern portions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. Many subdivisions can be made to distinguish the limits of seas and gulfs that have historical, political, and sometimes ecological significance. However, water properties, ocean currents, and biological populations are not constrained by these boundaries. Indeed, many researchers do not recognize them either.
If area-volume analyses of the oceans are to be made, then boundaries must be established to separate individual regions. In 1921 Erwin Kossina, a German geographer, published tables giving the distribution of oceanic water with depth for the oceans and adjacent seas. This work was updated in 1966 by American geologist H.W. Menard and American oceanographer S.M. Smith. The latter only slightly changed the numbers derived by Kossina. This was remarkable, since the original effort relied entirely on the sparse depth measurements accumulated by individual wire soundings, while the more recent work had the benefit of acoustic depth soundings collected since the 1920s. This type of analysis, called hypsometry, allows quantification of the surface area distribution of the oceans and their marginal seas with depth.
The distribution of oceanic surface area with 5° increments of latitude shows that the distribution of land and water on Earth’s surface is markedly different in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The Southern Hemisphere may be called the water hemisphere, while the Northern Hemisphere is the land hemisphere. This is especially true in the temperate latitudes.
This asymmetry of land and water distribution between the Northern and Southern hemispheres makes the two hemispheres behave very differently in response to the annual variation in solar radiation received by Earth. The Southern Hemisphere shows only a small change in surface temperature from summer to winter at temperate latitudes. This variation is controlled primarily by the ocean’s response to seasonal changes in heating and cooling. The Northern Hemisphere has one change in surface temperature controlled by its oceanic area and another controlled by its land area. In the temperate latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, the land is much warmer than the oceanic area in summer and much colder in winter. This situation creates large-scale seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and climate in the Northern Hemisphere that are not found in the Southern Hemisphere.
Home Geography & Travel Physical Geography of Water. Major subdivisions of the oceans. If the volume of an ocean is divided by its surface area, the mean depth is obtained. Even without including its marginal seas, the Pacific is the largest ocean in both surface area and volume, the Atlantic is next, and the Arctic is the smallest.
Ocean Geography ~ MarineBio Conservation Society. The five oceans from smallest to largest are: the Arctic, Southern, Indian, Atlantic and Pacific.
