Thursday, January 17, 2008

underwater waterfall

clipped from www.whoi.edu
Gigantic underwater waterfall reveals our weather's secrets
It is often said that scientists have found out more about the surface of the moon than about what is going on in the depths of the ocean. So let’s take a journey down deep and find out
Imagine a waterfall that is so large it puts all those we know on land into its shadow, one that transports 2,000,000 m3 of water per second and descends almost 3000 m
in the northern North Atlantic , where the winters are cast in almost complete darkness and temperatures seldom creep above zero, the Greenland-Iceland-Scotland ridge separates two of the world’s ocean’s most active regions
In the GIN Seas surface waters are cooled by the icy atmospheric conditions, become heavy and sink to the bottom. These waters are called ‘deepwaters’. They build up behind the ridge, like a bathtub whose tap has been left running, and only through a few narrow but deep ‘bottlenecks’ along the ridge can these waters find their way into the North Atlantic .
fascinating - impossible to clip. visit source for full article. not very long and certainly a worth-while read!

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