Atlantic Ocean: The Facts

Written by Anna Mracek
Edited by Ray Arvidson and Stephanie Nelson

Situated between the continents of Europe, Africa and the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean is the second largest ocean in the world. It covers 92,370 square kilometers and holds 337,700 cubic kilometers of water (not including minor bordering seas). The Atlantic Ocean covers an area that is only slightly less that nine times that of the United States of America. While these figures are impressive in their own right, it is important to remember that all the oceans of the world are inter-connected, covering approximately ¾ of the Earth’s surface.

Though smaller than the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic has a drainage basin that is four times larger than that of the Pacific. The Atlantic receives water from most of Europe, Africa and the Americas via many of the major rivers in the world. The Mississippi, the Amazon, the Congo, the Niger and the major rivers in the Mediterranean all flow into the Atlantic.

The character of the ocean surface varies greatly as the Atlantic stretches from the Arctic to the Antarctic through the equatorial tropics. There is ice on the water in the Labrador Sea, Denmark Strait from October until June each year and the ice sheets of the polar regions are permanent. The coast of Africa (near Cape Verde) is a prime spot for the formation of hurricanes or tropical cyclones. These storms then travel westward into the Caribbean, sometimes reaching land in South America, the Caribbean Islands, and the United State’s Eastern Seaboard. Hurricanes form most frequently from August to November, but they are possible for a much longer interval: May through December.

The floor of the Atlantic is the key to understanding its origin. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge—a rugged north-south centerline for the entire basin—provides evidence for the continental drift that separated the Americas from Europe and Africa. The Ridge is a range of volcanic mountains—extending above the surface in places to form volcanic islands such as Iceland. The lowest point reached by the Atlantic Ocean floor is in the Puerto Rico Trench at 8,605 meters below sea level.

Natural resources include oil and gas reserves (specifically in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Africa and in the North Sea), fish (especially Newfoundland), marine mammals (although protected now, seals and whales were a profitable harvest in earlier times), sand and gravel, metals—such as manganese nodules (yet to be exploited) and precious stones (diamond mines off the coast of South West Africa). Many of the resources of the world’s oceans are just now beginning to be tapped. Of course, the water itself is the most important of the world’s resources, as life depends on its abundance and purity.

Bibliography:

CIA World Factbook:
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook

The Oceans, Brila Economic Research Foundation Economic Research Division, Mayapuri, New Delhi: Allied Publishers Limited, 1992

Regional Oceanography, An Introduction
http://gaea.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/regoc/text/14topo.html

Also Check Out:

International Year of the Ocean
http://ioc.unesco.org/iyo/

JPL’s Air Sea Research Project
http://airsea-www.jpl.nasa.gov/

University of Texas Map Collection
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection