The North Atlantic Current (also known as North Atlantic Drift and North Atlantic Sea Movement) is a powerful warm ocean current that continues the Gulf Stream northeast. West of Continental Europe it splits into two major branches. One branch goes southeast, later to become the Canary Current as it passes northwest Africa and turns southwest. The other major branch continues north along the coast of northwestern Europe. It is thought to have a considerable warming influence on the climate, although a minority have disputed this. Other branches include the Irminger Current and the Norwegian Current. Driven by the global thermohaline circulation (THC), the North Atlantic Current is also often considered part of the wind-driven Gulf Stream which goes further east and north from the North American coast, across the Atlantic and into the Arctic Ocean.
Famous quotes containing the words north atlantic, north, atlantic and/or current:
“The battle of the North Atlantic is a grim business, and it isn’t going to be won by charm and personality.”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. First Sea Lord (Laurence Naismith)
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)
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—Colleen Kay Hutchins (b. c. 1932)
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—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)