- Industry: Education
- Number of terms: 34386
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
Founded in 1876, Texas A&M University is a U.S. public and comprehensive university offering a wide variety of academic programs far beyond its original label of agricultural and mechanical trainings. It is one of the few institutions holding triple federal designations as a land-, sea- and ...
The northeastern arm of the Indian Ocean, located between peninsular India and Burma. It covers about 2,200,000 sq. km and is bordered on the north by the Ganges and Brahmaputra River deltas, on the east by the Burmese peninsula and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, on the west by India proper and Ceylon, and on the south by the Indian Ocean proper. The average depth is around 3000 m with maximum depths reaching over 400 m in the southern parts.
Major circulation features are the East Indian Current, a northward current flowing along the Indian shelf from January through October, and the East Indian Winter Jet, a southwestward flowing current that replaces during the remainder of the year. This current reversal is due to the seasonal change from the Northeast to the Southwest Monsoon and the concomitant wind forcing. General clockwise and conterclockwise circulation gyres are seen throughout the Bay accompanying, respectively, the Current and the Winter Jet, although the situation becomes a bit more complicated during the transition periods.
The monsoonal wind variations and the resulting circulations also serve to induce upwelling near the coasts during the spring (with the northward current) and the piling up of surface water along the coasts during the late fall and early winter (with the southward currents). Thus the isopycnals tilt upwards and downwards towards the shore during, respectively, the spring and late fall. The annual mean SST for the region is above 28. 5° C. , although upwelling can reduce this to 25-27° C during the spring. The salinities are kept lower than normal oceanic values (especially in the western parts) by extensive monsoonal river runoff.
Industry:Earth science
This is a high resolution temporal and spatial study whose objective is to understand how the properties of the abyssal boundary layer respond to and modify the incoming chemical signal from the surface layers and therefore affect the paleoceanographic record in the underlying sediment. BENGAL aims to quantify and characterize the incoming flux (with time-lapse sediment traps and midwater particle cameras), its resuspension (with transmissometers and current meters), and its ultimate deposition (with chemical analysis of core samples and time-lapse sea-bed photography).
Industry:Earth science
A study conducted off east Antarctica in the Austral summer of 1995-96. The primary focus was to describe the distribution and abundance of Antarctic krill and to determine possible sources of Antarctic bottom water in the region.
Industry:Earth science
The meridional atmospheric circulation that transports air poleward and downward from the tropical middle atmosphere. Air is transferred between the equator and poles by this circulation on a time scale of months, indicative of the strong control by the Coriolis force that deflects the air stream zonally and inhibits meridional motions.
Industry:Earth science
The nearly horizontal portion of a beach formed by the deposition of sediment by receding waves. A beach may have more than one berm.
Industry:Earth science
The ratio of the amount of sensible to that of latent heat lost by a surface to the atmosphere by the processes of conduction and turbulence.
Industry:Earth science
A current that flows northward along the west coast of southern Africa between about 15 and 35° S. This is the eastern limb of the subtropical gyre circulation system in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Industry:Earth science
A mechanical current meter, first designed and used in the 1930s, in which the propellor and the compass both drive a set of horizontal dials with raised numbers on their vertical rims. A clockwork mechanism moves a strip of tin foil past the vertical rims of the dials and a hammer presses the the foil against the raised numbers on the rims every 5 or 10 minutes. The speed and direction can be obtained from the information on the foil. Wide use of this mechanism was forestalled by the difficulty in finding a material for the spring in the clockwork that could withstand the corrosive exposure to sea water.
Industry:Earth science
The thickest and upper of three layers into which the bottom 1000 m of the ocean are sometimes divided, with the other two being the BML and BEL. The BNL is characterized by an increasing concentration of suspended material towards the bottom, and it extends from the clear water minimum (CWM) (at around 1000 meters above the bottom) down to the deep-sea bottom.
Industry:Earth science
A regional sea in the Australasian Archipelago covering approximately 470,000 square kilometers and centered at about 126° E and 5° S. It consists of several basins and troughs interconnected by sills whose depths are mostly greater than 3000 m.
Industry:Earth science
