335 articles
Biogenic silica
Biogenic silica (BSi), also called biogenic opal, is the amorphous hydrated silica that diatoms, radiolarians, sponges, and plants build into skeletons and cell walls from dissolved silicic acid.
Biogeochemical Argo
Biogeochemical Argo, or BGC-Argo, is an international program launched in 2016 that extends the Argo float array with sensors for oxygen, nitrate, pH, and chlorophyll.
Biological pump
The biological pump, also called the biological carbon pump, transfers organic carbon fixed by surface plankton into the ocean interior, keeping CO₂ out of the atmosphere for centuries.
Black smoker
A black smoker is a type of hydrothermal vent that emits superheated, mineral-rich water as dark, smoke-like fluid, first observed in 1979 on the East Pacific Rise.
Boaty McBoatface
Boaty McBoatface is an autonomous underwater vehicle operated by the UK's National Oceanography Centre, named for the joke entry that won a 2016 poll to name a polar research ship.
Boundary mixing
Boundary mixing is turbulent mixing of a stratified fluid on sloping topography, such as ocean margins and lake beds, caused mainly by breaking internal waves.
Boussinesq equations (water waves)
The Boussinesq equations for water waves describe weakly nonlinear, weakly dispersive waves in shallow water, first derived by Joseph Boussinesq in 1872 and now widely used in coastal modeling.
Brazil Current
The Brazil Current is a warm, southward-flowing western boundary current of the South Atlantic Subtropical Gyre, forming where the South Equatorial Current splits near 15°S and meeting the Malvinas Current near 38°S.
Brine pool
A brine pool, also called an underwater lake, is a depression on the deep seafloor filled with dense hypersaline brine that pools like a lake, known from the Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean, and Red Sea.
Brine rejection
Brine rejection is the process by which growing sea ice expels its salt into the surrounding ocean, leaving the ice fresher than the seawater it formed from.
Brinicle
A brinicle is a hollow, downward-growing tube of ice that forms beneath polar sea ice when dense, supercooled brine sinks and freezes surrounding seawater, sometimes reaching the seafloor.
Buoyancy engine
A buoyancy engine is a propulsion device used in profiling floats and underwater gliders that changes the vehicle's volume to sink or rise without a propeller.
Cabled seafloor observatory
A cabled seafloor observatory is a permanent seafloor installation connected to shore by electro-optical cable that supplies power and returns instrument data in real time.
Calcium carbonate saturation horizon
The calcium carbonate saturation horizon is the ocean depth where seawater is exactly saturated with calcium carbonate, with separate horizons for calcite and the more soluble aragonite.
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, also known as CMOS, is Canada's national society advancing atmospheric and oceanic sciences, founded in 1967 and based in Ottawa.
Canary Current
The Canary Current is a wind-driven eastern boundary current flowing southward along northwest Africa and Iberia, driving one of the world's four major coastal upwelling systems.
Carbonate compensation depth
The carbonate compensation depth (CCD) is the ocean depth at which the supply of calcium carbonate sinking from the surface equals its dissolution at the seafloor.
Challenger expedition
The Challenger expedition was a British scientific voyage around the globe aboard HMS Challenger from 1872 to 1876, regarded as the founding voyage of modern oceanography.
Chemosynthetic ecosystems
Chemosynthetic ecosystems are biological communities whose food supply comes from chemical energy instead of sunlight, first discovered at hydrothermal vents near the Galapagos Islands in 1977.
Chikyu (drillship)
Chikyu (ちきゅう, "Earth") is a Japanese deep-sea scientific drillship operated by JAMSTEC, delivered in 2005, the only scientific drillship with riser drilling, built to drill toward Earth's upper mantle.
CLIVAR
CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change) is a core project of the World Climate Research Programme, launched in 1995 to study the ocean's role in climate.
Coastal flooding
Coastal flooding, also called coastal inundation or estuarine flooding, is the flooding of low-lying land by seawater, most often when storm surges and strong winds coincide with high tides.
Coastal upwelling
Coastal upwelling is the wind-driven rise of cold, nutrient-rich deep water along coastlines, where winds push surface water offshore and it is replaced from below.
Coastal Zone Color Scanner
The Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) was a NASA radiometer on the Nimbus-7 satellite, launched in 1978, that was the first sensor devoted to measuring ocean color from space.
Cold blob
The cold blob, also called the North Atlantic warming hole, is a region south of Greenland where sea surface temperatures have cooled even as the rest of the planet warmed.
Cold seep
A cold seep, also called a methane seep, is a seafloor location where methane-rich fluids escape into the ocean at temperatures near that of seawater, sustaining ecosystems that live without sunlight.
Continental shelf
A continental shelf is the submerged, gently sloping edge of a continent, extending from the shoreline to the shelf break at roughly 100 to 200 meters depth.
Copernicus Marine Service
The Copernicus Marine Service, also called the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service, is the European Union's operational ocean monitoring and forecasting service, launched in 2014.
CTD (instrument)
A CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) is the standard oceanographic instrument for profiling seawater, lowering conductivity, temperature, and pressure sensors from a research vessel to derive salinity and depth.
Cumbre Vieja tsunami hazard
The Cumbre Vieja tsunami hazard is the possibility that a large collapse of the Cumbre Vieja volcano's western flank on La Palma would generate an Atlantic-crossing tsunami.