Vocabulary

Anticyclonic - rotating clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, counter clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere

Anomaly - the deviation from the normal (often used in Sea Surface heights as the deviation from mean sea level)

Altimetry - the use of an altimeter to measure the distance to the earth's surface, indirectly calculating the height above the geoid

Eddys - warm core rings or cold core rings originating as the strong current meanders forming loops; these rings may become separated from the mainstream of water

Coriolis Effect - the apparent force, caused by the earth's rotation, which causes the deflection to the right in the Northern Hemisphere of moving objects, such as air and surface ocean waters

Cyclone - circulation rotating counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere

Cyclogenesis - the birth of a hurricane

Geostrophic Flow - the balance of fluid motion that occurs as a result of the Coriolis Effect counteracting the gravitational pull of water from the center of a gyre

Geoid - the gravitational equipotential of the earth, or the surface to which an ocean at rest would conform

Gyre - a major clockwise or counterclockwise circulation in a body of water that is deflected by the coriolis effect

Hurricane - a tropical cyclone with surface wind speeds in excess of 74 mph rotating counterclockwise in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Gulf of Mexico

Mean sea level - the average height of the sea surface, including tidal fluctuations, measured over a long period of time for a particular location. Using satellites, it is the average the ocean heights measured and mapped over the entire globe compared and calibrated to local sea level readings

Meander - a diversion from the normal path of a current in the ocean typically forming a sine curve; this meandering leads to the formation of rings of both cold and warm water

North wall - the strong boundary of water that separates the warm Gulf Stream from the colder waters to the North Sargasso Sea -- a centralized "calm" section of the N Atlantic Ocean between latitudes 20^oN and 35^oN formed by the surface currents of this ocean

Western Boundary current - those clockwise flowing currents that occur on the western side of the ocean basins in the Northern Hemisphere

Western intensification - the tendency of currents flowing on the western boundaries of the oceans to be stronger and of greater velocity; in the Northern Hemisphere this would be near the Northwest portion of the gyre