Great question! Currents can be up to about 2 m/s, but that is pretty rare. More typical current speeds are between 0.1-1 m/s. The current speeds vary a lot in time and from place to place. Here is a movie of ocean current speeds made by colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: https://youtu.be/CCmTY0PKGDs
The ocean is constantly moving, but the motion is pretty sluggish compared to what we are used to for wind speeds or driving in a car. Ocean currents are usually described using the metric system (meters per second) or nautical miles per hour (knots). One meter per second is about 2.2 miles per hour, and one knot is about 1.15 miles per hour.
Typical ocean currents are a fraction of a meter per second (0.2-0.5 m/s), so usually less than 1 mile per hour. You could easily walk faster than that. Strong currents like the Gulf Stream are about 2.5 meters per second, or 5.5 miles per hour. You would have to break into a jog to go that fast.
The ocean is slow, but it is relentless. Huge volumes of water are constantly moving, so over a season or a year large amounts of heat, salt and other properties are transported around the world. The Gulf Stream can transport over 100 million cubic metres per second of water. That’s about 30 billion gallons per second!
Jed Goldstoneon January 24, 2021 at 12:44 pm
When I was starting in oceanography, one of the favorite units I learned about was a measure of volume moving past a point – what Al Plueddemann references above. This unit is known as the ‘Sverdrup,’ named after a famous oceanographer. It is a million cubic meters per second (about a bathtub full per second) – so the Gulf Stream is measured at 100 Sverdrups. The very fact that oceanography needed such a big unit pointed out to me that the ocean is very big, and moves lots of water (and thus salt and heat) around the ocean. Even though the Gulf Stream carries so much water, it doesn’t move that fast – typically about 4 mph, a little faster than a healthy adult comfortably walks.
Great question! Currents can be up to about 2 m/s, but that is pretty rare. More typical current speeds are between 0.1-1 m/s. The current speeds vary a lot in time and from place to place. Here is a movie of ocean current speeds made by colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
https://youtu.be/CCmTY0PKGDs
The ocean is constantly moving, but the motion is pretty sluggish compared to what we are used to for wind speeds or driving in a car. Ocean currents are usually described using the metric system (meters per second) or nautical miles per hour (knots). One meter per second is about 2.2 miles per hour, and one knot is about 1.15 miles per hour.
Typical ocean currents are a fraction of a meter per second (0.2-0.5 m/s), so usually less than 1 mile per hour. You could easily walk faster than that. Strong currents like the Gulf Stream are about 2.5 meters per second, or 5.5 miles per hour. You would have to break into a jog to go that fast.
The ocean is slow, but it is relentless. Huge volumes of water are constantly moving, so over a season or a year large amounts of heat, salt and other properties are transported around the world. The Gulf Stream can transport over 100 million cubic metres per second of water. That’s about 30 billion gallons per second!
When I was starting in oceanography, one of the favorite units I learned about was a measure of volume moving past a point – what Al Plueddemann references above. This unit is known as the ‘Sverdrup,’ named after a famous oceanographer. It is a million cubic meters per second (about a bathtub full per second) – so the Gulf Stream is measured at 100 Sverdrups. The very fact that oceanography needed such a big unit pointed out to me that the ocean is very big, and moves lots of water (and thus salt and heat) around the ocean. Even though the Gulf Stream carries so much water, it doesn’t move that fast – typically about 4 mph, a little faster than a healthy adult comfortably walks.