Ocean Currents - Beauty

Driven by Earth’s rotation and global wind patterns, and fueled by the Sun, ocean currents play an important role in driving Earth’s climate, weather patterns, and marine life. Because the Earth is spinning, the water feels the Coriolis effect. This pushes some of the strongest currents, like the Gulf Stream and the East Australian Current, against the east side of the continents. This visualization makes it easy to see how the ocean moves water across the planet. The ocean basins are like a big interconnected highway that transports nutrients, carbon and heat around the world. For instance, the Gulf Stream (shown here in light blue to white) is a powerful current travelling northward from the Caribbean along the United States coast and across to Northwestern Europe. The Gulf Stream carries heat from the tropics toward far northern latitudes, making places like the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Scandinavia warmer than they would be otherwise.

This mesmerizing data visualization of ocean currents was created using a model called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, or ECCO, for short. It's built using real world data from satellites, buoys and all kinds of other measurements. In this version, ocean currents at all depths are shown. Those closer to the surface (above 600 meters depth) are white while those from 600 meters depth and lower are darker and darker shades of blue. There are also two other variations of this dataset in a collection called Perpetual Ocean - one shaded to show salinity levels and another shaded to show temperature. This version is called the beauty version because of the stunning visuals that it creates.

NASA’s ocean model, Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO)), was used to visualize the currents here. The ECCO ocean circulation model incorporates observations from spacecraft, buoys, and other in situ measurements to keep the model accurate. ECCO is a joint project between NASA/JPL and MIT. The model output used here is from ECCO-2 and covers the years 2021-2023.