Ocean Currents

What is Ocean Currents?

Within Geography, which covers maps, landforms, weather, climate, population and settlements: understand how our planet and people connect, this topic explains Ocean Currents. Geography explains how places, people and natural processes connect, so each topic here combines a clear definition with a visual model.

Check that you can explain Ocean Currents in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding Ocean Currents helps you explain patterns on maps and in the news, and make reasoned decisions about places and environments.

Ocean Currents in detail

Ocean currents are large movements of water driven by wind, the Earth's rotation, temperature and salinity differences. Surface currents form circular gyres: clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and anticlockwise in the Southern. Warm currents carry heat from the tropics towards the poles, as with the Gulf Stream, which keeps north-western Europe milder than other places at the same latitude.

Cold currents, such as the Humboldt, bring cold water toward the Equator and make coasts drier. Deep ocean circulation (thermohaline) carries cold, salty water. Currents affect climate, fishing, shipping routes and the spread of pollution, and El Niño changes them with global effects on weather.

How the interactive helps you understand Ocean Currents

Watch the Earth model in the interactive. Use any sliders or buttons it offers to change the values and see how the Earth model responds.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of Ocean Currents.

Real-life uses and examples

• Explain how Ocean Currents affects people, jobs and land use in a region.
• Support an answer about Ocean Currents with a named case study and specific evidence.
• Interpret a graph or map that shows Ocean Currents and say what it suggests.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Mixing up cause, effect and consequence when you explain Ocean Currents.
• Writing general statements without a named place or example.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.