ocean current
Currents transport heat, nutrients, and organisms. This topic is part of Oceanography within Science & Nature. This page currently draws on 12 supporting questions, with answers and bonus facts available below.
ocean current trivia questions
An ocean current is a large-scale movement of what?
Answer: Seawater
Bonus fact: Currents transport heat, nutrients, and organisms.
What warm current strongly influences the climate of western Europe?
Answer: Gulf Stream
Bonus fact: The Gulf Stream carries warm Atlantic water northeastward.
Deep ocean currents are driven largely by differences in temperature and what?
Answer: Salinity
Bonus fact: Density differences create thermohaline circulation.
Which ocean current contributes to the Atacama's dryness?
Answer: Humboldt Current
Bonus fact: The cold Humboldt Current suppresses rainfall along the coast.
What primarily drives large-scale surface ocean currents?
Answer: Global wind systems
Bonus fact: Earth’s rotation and the shapes of ocean basins modify the paths of wind-driven surface currents.
Which ocean current forms the western boundary of the Sargasso Sea?
Answer: Gulf Stream
Bonus fact: NOAA identifies the Gulf Stream as the Sargasso Sea’s western boundary.
Which cool ocean current tempers Angola's Atlantic coastal strip?
Answer: Benguela Current
Bonus fact: The U.S. State Department says this current helps give Angola's coastal strip a climate similar to coastal Baja California.
What term does NOAA use for a large system of rotating ocean currents?
Answer: Gyre
Bonus fact: NOAA recognizes five major ocean gyres.
What oceanographic term means a large system of rotating ocean currents?
Answer: Gyre
Bonus fact: NOAA identifies five major ocean gyres: two in the Pacific, two in the Atlantic, and one in the Indian Ocean.
What powerful current circles Antarctica within the Southern Ocean?
Answer: Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Bonus fact: It is the world's strongest ocean current by volume transport.
A message in a bottle released into the ocean is most likely transported over long distances primarily by what?
Answer: Ocean currents
Bonus fact: Surface currents can carry floating bottles across large stretches of ocean.
What makes the Sargasso Sea unusual among seas?
Answer: It is defined by ocean currents rather than land boundaries
Bonus fact: Its boundaries include the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Current, Canary Current, and North Atlantic Equatorial Current.