Florida Current

The Florida Current is a thermal ocean current that flows generally from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. The current was discovered by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León in 1513.

The Florida Current results from the movement of water pushed from the Atlantic into the Caribbean Sea by the rotation of the Earth (which exerts a greater force at the equator). The water piles up along Central America and flows northward through the Yucatán Channel into the Gulf of Mexico. The water is heated in the Gulf and forced out through the Florida Straits, between the Florida Keys and Cuba and flows northward along the east coast of the United States. The Florida Current is often referred to imprecisely as the Gulf Stream. In fact, the Florida Current joins the Gulf Stream off the east coast of Florida.

The water reaches a velocity of 1.8 m/s or 3.6 knots.

External links

Florida Current Transport Time Series and Cruises; Western Boundary Time Series
Joanna Gyory et al. The Florida Current; University of Miami

Ocean currents and gyres

Currents

Arctic Ocean	East Greenland North Icelandic Norwegian Transpolar Drift Stream

Atlantic Ocean	Angola Antilles Azores Baffin Island Benguela Brazil Canary Cape Horn Caribbean East Greenland East Iceland Falkland Florida Guinea Gulf Stream Irminger Labrador Lomonosov Loop North Atlantic North Brazil North Equatorial Norwegian Portugal Slope Jet South Atlantic South Equatorial West Greenland West Spitsbergen

Indian Ocean	Agulhas Agulhas Return East Madagascar Equatorial Counter Indian Monsoon Indonesian Throughflow Leeuwin Madagascar Mozambique Somali South Australian South Equatorial West Australian

Pacific Ocean	Alaska Aleutian California Cromwell Davidson East Australian East Korea Warm Equatorial Counter Humboldt Indonesian Throughflow Kamchatka Kuroshio Mindanao North Equatorial North Korea Cold North Pacific Oyashio South Equatorial Tasman Front

Southern Ocean	Antarctic Circumpolar Tasman Outflow

Gyres

Major gyres	Indian Ocean Gyre North Atlantic Gyre South Atlantic Gyre North Pacific Gyre South Pacific Gyre

Other gyres	Beaufort Gyre Ross Gyre Weddell Gyre

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/25/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.

Florida Current

See also

External links