Thread: Pacific/Atlantic Ocean temperature

Does the temperature of the Pacific Ocean have any affect on the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean?

Well, I guess if you were somehow able to change the temperature of the whole Pacific ocean it would affect the Atlantic...

i suppose that if it heats the water too greatly in te pacific then it would not precipate from apour for longer than usual, and may bypass the atlantic, resulting in a smaller amount of water, more susceptible to temperature changes due to atmospheric conditions

Perhaps it affect the waters south of South America, where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet?

the temperature of antartica wolud be enough to stop any effect a slight temperature difference down there wolud have, until it got to the point where the ice caps started to recede back to the mainland

Originally Posted by kayasan

Does the temperature of the Pacific Ocean have any affect on the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean?

Yes, and the effect is communicated via ocean currents. Here is something I posted elsewhere:
Ocean currents are driven by two factors:
1. Winds
2. Density contrasts (related to temperature and salinity)
They are modified by the Coriolis force.

There are surface currents and deep currents. Lets look at the surface currents first.

These are driven primarily by wind. They form five major circulating systems called gyres. There are two in the Atlantic (North and South), the Pacific (North and South) and one in the Indian Ocean. They rotate clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the Southern, driven by the prevailing winds. (The Indian Ocean current is unusual in that it reverses direction from summer to winter under the influence of the monsoon.) They carry warm waters from the equatorial regions towards high latititudes and cold water back towards the equator. They rarely run any deeper than about 100m, so they effect only a small volume of the total ocean.

The deep currents replace the waters of the deep oceans over a time scale of hundreds of years. They are driven primarily by density contrasts. The most important of these begins between Scotland and Greenland, where the descending cold waters of the North Atlantic Drift (the extension of the Gulf Stream) begin moving south down the Atlantic. They join the deep Antarctic circumpolar current that runs clockwise around that continent, before turning north in the Pacific and heading for the Aleutians, between Asia and North America. Here they surface and become part of the surface circulation pattern.