Atlantic Ocean
hideThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres (41.1 million square miles). It covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the "Sea of Atlas". The oldest known mention of this name is contained in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BC (I 202); see also: Atlas Mountains. Another name historically used was the ancient term Ethiopic Ocean, derived from Ethiopia, whose name was sometimes used as a synonym for all of Africa and thus for the ocean. Before Europeans discovered other oceans, the term "ocean" itself was to them synonymous with the waters beyond Western Europe that we now know as the Atlantic and which the Greeks had believed to be a gigantic river encircling the world; see Oceanus.
The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between the Americas to the west, and Eurasia and Africa to the east. A component of the all-encompassing World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean (which is sometimes considered a sea of the Atlantic), to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south. (Alternatively, in lieu of it connecting to the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic may be reckoned to extend southward to Antarctica.) The equator subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean but for physical purposes the division is rotated slightly counter-clockwise to a line roughly from the Bolama region, Guinea-Bissau to Rio Grande do Norte state, Brazil to include the Gulf of Guinea with the South Atlantic and the north coast of South America with the North Atlantic.
For more information about Atlantic Ocean, read the full article at
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News tagged with atlantic ocean
A glimpse at the Earth's crust deep below the Atlantic
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Nov 12, 2009 |
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Long-term variations in volcanism help explain the birth, evolution and death of striking geological features called oceanic core complexes on the ocean floor, says geologist Dr Bram Murton of the National ...
NASA's GOES Project offers real-time hurricane alley movies
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Nov 09, 2009 |
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People love to get the big picture of hurricane alleys, and thanks to the GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., they can now get real-time satellite animations of the eastern ...
W. Africa's last giraffes make surprising comeback
Nov 08, 2009 |
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(AP) -- A crisp African dawn is breaking overhead, and Zibo Mounkaila is on the back of a pickup truck bounding across a sparse landscape of rocky orange soil.
Newly Discovered Fat Molecule: An Undersea Killer with an Upside
Nov 05, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A chemical culprit responsible for the rapid, mysterious death of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic Ocean has been found by collaborating scientists at Rutgers University and the Woods Hole ...
Mapping nutrient distributions over the Atlantic Ocean
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Nov 03, 2009 |
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Large-scale distributions of two important nutrient pools - dissolved organic nitrogen and dissolved organic phosphorus (DON and DOP) have been systematically mapped for the first time over the Atlantic Ocean in a study led ...
North Atlantic fish populations shifting as ocean temperatures warm
Nov 02, 2009 |
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About half of 36 fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, many of them commercially valuable species, have been shifting northward over the last four decades, with some stocks nearly disappearing from U.S. waters as they ...
Henri born in Eastern Atlantic... could be short-lived
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Oct 07, 2009 |
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Forecasters were watching a storm they designated as 91 yesterday, October 6, until it organized into a tropical cyclone east of the Leeward Islands around 5 p.m. EDT. It was then named "Tropical Storm Henri," ...
A sudden Tropical Storm Grace explodes in far Eastern Atlantic
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Oct 05, 2009 |
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The latest tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean may have escaped the notice of most when it formed just before midnight last night so far north and east in the Atlantic, away from where forecasters usually ...
Seaglider sets new underwater endurance and range records
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Sep 10, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Washington Seaglider operated for 9 months and 5 days in the Pacific Ocean, an endurance record more than double what any other autonomous underwater vehicle has accomplished ...
NASA satellite and aircraft data see Danny's center reform farther north
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Aug 27, 2009 |
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NASA satellite imagery and aircraft data revealed Tropical Storm Danny's center reformed a little farther north than it was yesterday. The center of his circulation is "broad and elongated" so it's been somewhat ...
Harbingers of increased Atlantic hurricane activity identified
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Aug 12, 2009 |
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Reconstructions of past hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean indicate that the most active hurricane period in the past was during the "Medieval Climate Anomaly" about a thousand years ago when climate ...
Still a low chance of development for two lows
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jul 22, 2009 |
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The two areas of thunderstorms in the Caribbean from yesterday, July 21, are on the move. One area is now moving into out of the Caribbean and into the eastern Atlantic Ocean while the other is now moving ...
Airborne expedition chases Arctic sea ice questions
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jul 17, 2009 |
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A small NASA aircraft completed its first successful science flight Thursday in partnership with the University of Colorado at Boulder as part of an expedition to study the receding Arctic sea ice and improve ...
Iron and biological production in the high-latitude North Atlantic
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jul 07, 2009 |
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Southampton scientists have demonstrated an unexpected role of iron in regulating biological production in the high-latitude North Atlantic. Their findings have important implications for our understanding of ocean-climate ...
New type of El Nino could mean more hurricanes make landfall
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jul 02, 2009 |
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El Niño years typically result in fewer hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean. But a new study suggests that the form of El Niño may be changing potentially causing not only a greater number of hurricanes ...
