335 articles
Float (oceanography)
In oceanography, a float is an autonomous free-drifting instrument that sinks to a set depth and profiles temperature and salinity, transmitting data by satellite when it surfaces; about 4,000 are operated by the international Argo program.
Frazil ice
Frazil ice consists of fine ice crystals suspended in supercooled, turbulent water, forming first in rivers, lakes, and polar seas before becoming grease and pancake ice.
Gail Kineke
Gail C. Kineke is an American coastal oceanographer at Boston College who studies fine-sediment transport and fluid muds, and received a Presidential Early Career Award in 1996.
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel) is a German marine research institute in Kiel studying the ocean from seafloor to atmosphere.
Geosat
Geosat was a United States Navy satellite launched in 1985 carrying a radar altimeter that measured sea surface height to about 5 cm precision, becoming a milestone oceanography data set.
Geostationary Ocean Color Imager
The Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) is a South Korean ocean color imaging radiometer on the COMS satellite and the world's first geostationary ocean color sensor, launched in 2010.
Geostrophic current
A geostrophic current is an ocean current in which the Coriolis force from Earth's rotation balances the horizontal pressure gradient force, so the water flows along lines of constant pressure.
GEOTRACES
GEOTRACES is an international scientific program studying the distribution of trace elements and their isotopes in the ocean, with its main field effort launched in 2010.
Global Drifter Program
The Global Drifter Program (GDP) is a NOAA-led ocean observing program that maintains a global array of about 1,250 satellite-tracked drifting buoys measuring ocean currents and sea surface temperature.
Global Ocean Forecasting System
The Global Ocean Forecasting System (GOFS) is the United States Navy's global ocean and sea ice forecasting system, built on the HYCOM model and run daily.
Global Ocean Observing System
The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) is an intergovernmental framework led by UNESCO's IOC, created in 1991, that coordinates ocean observing networks delivering data on essential ocean variables.
Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP)
The Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) is an international network of about 55 ocean survey lines repeated roughly every decade, measuring full-depth changes in heat, carbon, oxygen, and salinity.
Glomar Explorer
Glomar Explorer, also known as Hughes Glomar Explorer, is a deep-ocean ship built by the CIA in the early 1970s to raise a sunken Soviet submarine.
Halocline
A halocline is a layer of water where salinity changes rapidly with depth, separating fresher surface water from saltier water below and limiting vertical mixing.
Hawaii Ocean Time-series
The Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) is a quasi-monthly oceanographic program that has measured hydrography, chemistry, and biology at Station ALOHA, 100 km north of Oahu, since October 1988.
High tide water
High tide water (high water, German Tidehochwasser) is the water level at a tide's highest point. Most coasts see two high tides per 24 h 50 min tidal day; spring and perigean tides raise the highest levels.
High-nutrient, low-chlorophyll region
A high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll (HNLC) region is an open-ocean area where surface waters hold plentiful nitrate and phosphate year-round, yet phytoplankton stays scarce, chiefly because iron is depleted.
HMS Dolphin (1751)
HMS Dolphin was a 24-gun Royal Navy frigate, built in 1751, and the first ship known to sail around the world twice, under Byron and Wallis.
HMS Endeavour
HMS Endeavour, originally the Earl of Pembroke, was a British collier sailed by James Cook from 1768 to 1771 for scientific discovery, later serving as the transport Lord Sandwich.
HMS Erebus (1826)
HMS Erebus was a Royal Navy bomb vessel, launched in 1826, that carried James Clark Ross to Antarctica and was lost with Franklin's 1845 Northwest Passage expedition.
Humboldt Current
The Humboldt Current, also called the Peru Current, flows northward along the coasts of Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, driving one of Earth's most productive marine ecosystems.
HY-2 (satellite)
HY-2, also known as Haiyang-2 (海洋二号), is a Chinese series of ocean dynamic environment satellites carrying radar altimeters, scatterometers, and radiometers to measure sea surface height, winds, and temperature; the first, HY-2A, launched in 2011.
HYCOM
HYCOM (HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model) is an ocean general circulation model that switches its vertical coordinate with location, used for global ocean nowcasting and operational hurricane prediction.
Hydrothermal circulation
Hydrothermal circulation: seawater moving through oceanic crust, driven by thermal gradients, exchanging heat and chemicals; accounts for 20–25% of Earth's heat loss and sustains chemosynthetic vent ecosystems discovered in 1977.
Hydrothermal vent
A hydrothermal vent, also known as a deep-sea vent, is a seafloor opening where seawater heated by magma reemerges as mineral-rich fluid, discovered near the Galápagos Islands in 1977.
Ice floe
An ice floe is a flat piece of sea ice 65 feet (20 m) or more across that floats freely, drifting with winds and currents in the polar pack.
Ice-Tethered Profiler
The Ice-Tethered Profiler (ITP) is an autonomous oceanographic instrument developed at Woods Hole that profiles the upper ocean beneath drifting Arctic sea ice and transmits data via satellite.
Ifremer
Ifremer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea, is a public oceanographic research institute founded in 1984 that operates France's fleet of 17 research vessels.
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean basin, bounded by Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Southern Ocean, and the only one closed by land to the north.
Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System
The Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System (IOTWMS) is the UNESCO-IOC-coordinated system detecting Indian Ocean tsunamis and issuing threat advisories, established in 2005 in response to the 2004 tsunami that killed almost 230,000 people.