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← Oceans

Currents

Ocean currents are lasting or recurring flows of water in the World Ocean and adjacent seas. They may be nearly steady, like the great subtropical gyres; periodic, like tidal streams; or irregular, like wind-driven drifts after a storm.

Surface currents are steered by wind, Earth’s rotation (the Coriolis effect), and the shape of the basins. They move heat from the tropics toward the poles, carry salt, nutrients, and larvae, and set the paths of ice and drifting debris.

The map is a 1943 teaching plate of named surface currents and ice limits. Modelled present-day surface flow is in Copernicus Marine and ESR OSCAR.

Vintage world map of named ocean currents in orange and green with ice-limit hatching at the poles
United States Army Service Forces, Atlas of World Maps (1943). Vintage: 1943 schematic.

US Army atlas plate, 1943: named surface currents and ice limits. A teaching schematic, not a satellite current field.

Schematic · named gyres 1943 US Army 1943 schematic

Named gyres

Warm surface currents in orange, cold in green; hatched ice at the poles. Gulf Stream, Kuroshio, Humboldt (Peru Current), Agulhas, and other named drifts.

OSCAR (Ocean Surface Current Analyses Real-time) estimates mixed-layer velocity from satellite sea-surface height, vector winds, and SST, using geostrophy, Ekman drift, and thermal wind. Daily fields at 0.25°, from 1993.

United States Army Service Forces, Atlas of World Maps (1943)
Vintage: 1943 schematic
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ocean_currents_1943_(borderless)3.png
License: Public domain (US government)

Open Copernicus Marine viewer → Open ESR OSCAR (modelled currents) →