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How the ocean works

Claudia Cenedese, scientist in the WHOI physical oceanography department, studies how water in the ocean moves. But she does it inside the box—by doing laboratory experiments that simulate oceans in their basins with a water-filled box that rotates as the Earth does. The diagrammed experiment traces the flow of relatively fresh water past Canada and Greenland in the Arctic Ocean. Dye in the less-salty water makes it visible as it hugs the plastic “coastlines,” so images of the flow can be recorded.
(Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)