Features
The Southern Ocean lies in the Southern Hemisphere. It has typical depths of between 4,000 and 5,000 m (13,000 to 16,000 ft) over most of its extent with only limited areas of shallow water. The Antarctic continental shelf appears generally narrow and unusually deep, its edge lying at depths up to 800 m (2,600 ft), compared to a global mean of 133 m (436 ft).
Equinox to equinox in line with the sun's seasonal influence, the Antarctic ice pack fluctuates from an average minimum of 2.6 million square km (1.0×106 sq mi) in March to about 18.8 million square km (7.2×106 sq mi) in September, more than a sevenfold increase in area.
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current moves perpetually eastward — chasing and joining itself, and at 21,000 km (13,000 mi) in length — it comprises the world's longest ocean current, transporting 130 million cubic m of water per second (4.6×109 cu ft/s) — 100 times the flow of all the world's rivers.
The Southern Ocean's greatest depth of 7,236 m (23,737 ft) occurs at the southern end of the South Sandwich Trench, at 60°00'S, 024°W.
Read more about this topic: Southern Ocean
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)