Gulf Stream

GULF STREAM

GULF STREAM. A powerful, warm, surface current in the North Atlantic Ocean, east of North America, the Gulf Stream is one of the strongest known currents. It originates in the Gulf of Mexico as the Florida Current, with an approximate temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit, a breadth of no more than fifty miles and a depth of a mile or more. It passes through the Straits of Florida and up along the eastern coast of the United States to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Canada, driven northward by southwest winds.

As the Gulf Stream reaches Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the cold Labrador Current that flows from the north separates it from the coast. At this confluence, the warm Gulf Stream waters combine with the cold winds accompanying the Labrador Current, forming one of the densest concentrations of fog in the world. Because of this immense heat transfer, atmospheric storms tend to intensify in this region. Also at this location, the Gulf Stream is split into two currents: the Canary Currents, which are diverted southeast and carry cooler waters to the Iberian Peninsula and northwestern Africa; and the North Atlantic Drift, which flows northwest toward western Europe, providing temperate waters to the western coastal areas of Europe. The water temperature decreases with the northward flow and the breadth of the current spans several hundred miles at its widest. The average speed of the Gulf Stream is four miles per hour, slowing to one mile per hour as the current widens to the north. The Gulf Stream transports as much as 3.99 billion cubic feet of water per second, an amount greater than that carried by all of the world's rivers combined. The current's core, or jet, follows the contours of the continental rise.

The Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León was the first to describe the Gulf Stream in 1513 as he searched for the fountain of youth in what is now Florida. The Gulf Stream played a major role in the settling of southeastern regions of the United States. North America's oldest city, St. Augustine, sits on the coast of eastern Florida where the Gulf Stream flows. It was founded during the Spanish period, fifty years or so after De León's trek. When the United States acquired Florida, land speculators quickly moved in and formed large plantations. Tourism in the region escalated soon after, and continued to thrive in the early 2000s, especially along Florida's Treasure Coast. The Gulf Stream was also popularized in art, as evidenced in Winslow Homer's 1899 painting The Gulf Stream.

Another major contribution of the Gulf Stream is its warming effect on the climates of adjacent land areas that it passes, especially in northern latitudes, where the coastal weather is quite temperate, even in winter. The Gulf Stream is known as a western-boundary current, a current that is located on the western side of every ocean basin. It is part of a clockwise-rotating system of currents in the North Atlantic. The Gulf Stream is the most extensively studied ocean current in the world, but many questions about it remain unanswered.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Groves, Donald G., and Lee M. Hunt. The Ocean World Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980.

Mary Anne Hansen

See also Climate ; Grand Banks ; Oceanography .