Glossary

Thermohaline circulation, colloquially referred to as the ocean conveyor belt, is an oceanographic circulation pattern at the surface of the ocean and in its depths. Connecting four of the five oceans, it forms a global cycle. What drives this massive exchange of mass and thermal energy is thermohaline in nature. In other words, it is driven by temperature and salinity differences within the world’s oceans, which are themselves responsible for differences in water density. In turn, the temperature differences are due to the dependence of the scale of solar irradiance on latitude. Read more about thermohaline circulation on Sea Ice Portal here.