751 articles
Benguela Current
The Benguela Current is the wind-driven eastern boundary current of the South Atlantic, flowing northwestward along southern Africa from Cape Agulhas to Cape Fria and driving rich coastal upwelling.
Benthic boundary layer
The benthic boundary layer is the region of water directly above a lake, river, or ocean sediment, where flow and solute transport are shaped by the sediment surface.
Benthic flux
A benthic flux is the rate at which a dissolved chemical species crosses the sediment-water interface per unit area, linking sediment chemistry to the overlying water.
Benthic-pelagic coupling
Benthic-pelagic coupling is the exchange of nutrients, mass, and energy between a water body's bottom sediments and its overlying water column, first described in 1975.
Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study
The Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) is an oceanographic program sampling the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda monthly since October 1988 to track ocean chemistry and climate change.
Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences
The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) is an oceanographic research and education institute in Bermuda, founded in 1903 and affiliated with Arizona State University since 2021.
Beta effect (oceanography)
The beta effect in oceanography is the increase of the Coriolis parameter with latitude, which drives western boundary currents such as the Gulf Stream and westward-propagating Rossby waves.
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.
Blackwater river
A blackwater river, or blackwater stream, is a river stained tea-brown to black by dissolved humic acids from decaying vegetation, transparent and acidic; the Rio Negro is the largest example.
Blowing snow
Blowing snow is surface snow lifted and carried by the wind to heights of 2 m or more, unlike drifting snow, which stays near the ground.
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.
Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats, also known as the Utah Salt Flats, are a 30,000-acre salt pan in Utah where the 300 through 600 mph land-speed barriers were broken.
Bottom-up control (ecology)
Bottom-up control is the regulation of a food web from its base, where resources like nutrients determine higher trophic levels, contrasting with top-down control by predators.
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.
Bowen ratio
The Bowen ratio is the ratio of sensible heat flux to latent heat flux from a surface, named for Ira S. Bowen, who derived it in 1926.
Brackish water
Brackish water, also called brack water, is water whose salt content falls between that of freshwater and seawater, occurring naturally in estuaries and in some groundwater.
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.
Brownification
Brownification, also called browning, is the increase in the yellow-brown color of inland waters, driven mainly by rising dissolved organic matter of terrestrial origin across the Northern Hemisphere.
Bubble plume
A bubble plume is a vertical, buoyancy-driven flow formed when gas is released through a diffuser at the bottom of a stratified lake, mixing water layers as it rises.
Budyko framework
The Budyko framework is a fundamental hydrological theory, formalized by Soviet climatologist Mikhail Budyko in 1974, that explains long-term partitioning of precipitation between evapotranspiration and runoff from a catchment's aridity.
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.
Cable route survey
A cable route survey is the hydrographic and geophysical investigation of a planned submarine cable corridor before installation, confirming the desktop-study route is safe, buildable, and suitable for burial.
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.