Golfstrømmen: Mekanik og klimaeffekt

Where to begin. The thing is, there isn’t really a beginning. It all just flows around and around in a circular motion, a bit like a conveyor belt. What I’m talking about is a stream. A stream that most of our climate actually is very dependent on. The stream is called The Gulf Stream.

Even though it doesn’t really start at one specific place, it still originates from the Gulf of Mexico.

As you can see in pic 1. the stream flows from The Gulf of Mexico up till Cape Hatteras in North Carolina where the current splits into two currents: the Canary Currents, which goes southeast and carries cold water to the Iberian Peninsula and northwestern Africa.

Then there’s the North Atlantic Drift, which goes northwest towards Western Europe, providing temperate waters to the western coastal areas of Europe. This can be seen in picture 1.

It is one of the most powerful currents in the world. It moves as much as 3.99 billion cubic feet of water per second. That is an amount greater than that carried by all of the world's rivers combined.

All this water runs in a certain way, to be able to flow the way it does. The easiest way to explain it is to resemble the movement of The Gulf Stream to something everybody knows. I actually already mentioned this, but The Gulf Streams motion can be represented like a form of conveyor belt. This happens due to difference in temperature and salinity in the water.