The oceans transport vast amounts of water, heat and salt across entire ocean basins and from low to high latitudes. As the ocean basins the gateways between them evolve over tectonic timescale, so does the circulation. These tectonic induced changes in ocean circulation plays an important role in some of the major climatic events. These […]
Polar Stratospheric Clouds are clouds in the winter polar stratosphere at latitudes of 15,000-25,000 m. The stratosphere is very dry, it rarely allows to form clouds. These high altitude clouds form only at very low temperatures helps destroy ozone in two ways : By providing surface to reactive chlorine, and removing nitrogen that moderates chlorine
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Wind is the movement of air, caused by the uneven heating of the Earth by the sun and the Earth’s own rotation. Winds range from light breezes to natural hazards such as hurricanes and tornadoes. Generally on the basis of scale wind is classified into 5 types – Molecular and eddy viscosity :- When a fluid
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Rainfall is the amount of precipitation, in the form of rain (water from clouds), that descends onto the surface of Earth, whether it is on land or water. Based on the source of uplifting of air, there are three main types of rainfall – Convectional Rainfall :- Frontal Rainfall :- This type of precipitation is associated
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An unusual warming event known as Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) has been observed over Antarctica and Arctic which is also found to be linked with an ozone hole shrinking over the pole. SSW refers to this warming in the stratosphere, a rapid warming (up to about 50-°C in just a couple of days), between 10
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Sediment can be consist of either mineral or fossil particles, and both types can be found in many places on the bottom of the sea. Classification of marine sedimentation :- The sedimentation can be subdivided on the basis of the size of the particles or on the basis of their mode of formation. Factors that
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The oceanic mixed layer (OML) is the ocean region adjacent to the air-sea interface and is typically tens of meter deep and due to the fact that it is well mixed, the temperature and salinity are fairly uniform. The rapidly changing below these uniform regions of temperature , salinity and density are called thermocline, halocline
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A dynamic topography map provides the information about horizontal circulation of the waters and magnitude of the flow at different depths. Ocean currents are mapped by studying the hills and valleys in maps of the sea surface height relative to the geoid, known as ‘Dynamic ocean topography’. Currents move around ocean dynamic topography hills &
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Separation of a liquid from the partially melted solid residue is a form of diversification because it involves partitioning and separation of chemical constituents, and it can produce a variety of melt compositions from a single source. When the interfacial energy (surface tension) of the melt is similar to that of the minerals, the dihedral
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Ophiolites are considered to be masses of oceanic crust and upper mantle thrust onto the edge of a continental or incorporated in mountain belts, where they are tectonically disrupted and now exposed by erosion. A typical Ophiolite, in this case based primarily on the Semail Ophiolite in Oman on the Arabian peninsula, a particularly well
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