Almeria-Oran Front
From The Encyclopedia of Earth
Oceans and seas (main)
March 29, 2010, 12:00 am
May 14, 2011, 5:26 pm
The Almeria-Oran Front is an oceanic front and an associated sea current that separate the fresher water flowing in from the Atlantic Ocean via the Gibraltar Strait from the more saline Mediterranean Sea water; more properly, the western arm of the Mediterranean Sea here is known as the Alboran Sea. The incoming fresher Atlantic water flows eastward as a jet, breaks into two large eddies of around 150 kilometres in diameter (known as the Alboran Gyre), and then is deflected to the right (the south) by the Coriolis force where it encounters the North African coast and continues flowing eastward as the Algerian Current.
Further Reading
- Peter Saundry. 2011. Seas of the world. Topic ed. C.Michael Hogan. Ed.-in-chief Cutler J.Cleveland. Encyclopedia of Earth
- Matthias Tomczak and J. Stuart Godfrey. Regional Oceanography: An Introduction. Pergamon, 1994.
- Marc Hauschildt, Joachim Rinna, and Jürgen Rullkötter, Molecular Indicators of the supply of marine and terrigenous organic matter to a pleistocene organic-matter-rich layer in the Alboran Basin (Western Mediterranean Sea), Zahn, R., Comas, M.C., and Klaus, A. (Eds.), 1999 Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program, Scientific Results, Vol. 161
