Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is an ocean current that flows clockwise from west to east around Antarctica. An alternative name for the ACC is the West Wind Drift. The ACC is the dominant circulation feature of the Southern Ocean and has a mean transport estimated at 100–150 Sverdrups, or possibly even higher, making it the largest ocean current. The current is circumpolar due to the lack of any landmass connecting with Antarctica and this keeps warm ocean waters away from Antarctica, enabling that continent to maintain its huge ice sheet.
The Drake Passage is the body of water between South America's Cape Horn, Chile, Argentina and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean. The passage is named after the 16th-century English explorer and privateer Sir Francis Drake.
The South American Plate is a major tectonic plate which includes the continent of South America as well as a sizable region of the Atlantic Ocean seabed extending eastward to the African Plate, with which it forms the southern part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Elephant Island is an ice-covered, mountainous island off the coast of Antarctica in the outer reaches of the South Shetland Islands, in the Southern Ocean. The island is situated 245 kilometres north-northeast of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, 1,253 kilometres west-southwest of South Georgia, 935 kilometres south of the Falkland Islands, and 885 kilometres southeast of Cape Horn. It is within the Antarctic claims of Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom.
The East Pacific Rise (EPR) is a mid-ocean rise, at a divergent tectonic plate boundary, located along the floor of the Pacific Ocean. It separates the Pacific Plate to the west from the North American Plate, the Rivera Plate, the Cocos Plate, the Nazca Plate, and the Antarctic Plate. It runs south from the Gulf of California in the Salton Sea basin in Southern California to a point near 55°S130°W, where it joins the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge (PAR) trending west-southwest towards Antarctica, near New Zealand. Much of the rise lies about 3,200 km (2,000 mi) off the South American coast and rises about 1,800–2,700 m (5,900–8,900 ft) above the surrounding seafloor.
The Scotia Plate is a minor tectonic plate on the edge of the South Atlantic and Southern oceans. Thought to have formed during the early Eocene with the opening of the Drake Passage that separates Antarctica and South America, it is a minor plate whose movement is largely controlled by the two major plates that surround it: the Antarctic Plate and the South American Plate. The Scotia Plate takes its name from the steam yacht Scotia of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902–04), the expedition that made the first bathymetric study of the region.
The Phoenix Plate was a tectonic plate that existed during the early Paleozoic through late Cenozoic time. It formed a triple junction with the Izanagi and Farallon plates in the Panthalassa Ocean as early as 410 million years ago, during which time the Phoenix Plate was subducting under eastern Gondwana.
The Chilean Antarctic Territory or Chilean Antarctica is a part of West Antarctica claimed by Chile. It comprises the region south of 60°S latitude and the area between longitudes 53°W and 90°W, partially overlapping with the Antarctic claims of Argentina and the United Kingdom. The Antártica commune is administered by the Cabo de Hornos municipality on the South American mainland.
The region of the Beagle Channel, explored by Robert FitzRoy in the 1830s, was one of the last to be colonized by Chile and Argentina. The cold weather, the long distances from other inhabited regions, and the shortage of transport and subsistence, kept it far from the governmental task.
The Shackleton Fracture Zone (SFZ) is an undersea fracture zone, mid-oceanic ridge and fault located in the Drake Passage, at the separation between the Scotia Plate from the Antarctic Plate. It extends between 59° and 60°40' south latitude and between 56°30' and 61° west longitude and runs in a northwest to southeast direction from the South American continental shelf to the South Shetland Islands. Chile claims the area as part of its Outer Continental Shelf boundary.
Farthest South refers to the most southerly latitude reached by explorers before the first successful expedition to the South Pole in 1911.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to Oceanography.
The South American–Antarctic Ridge or simply American-Antarctic Ridge is the tectonic spreading center between the South American Plate and the Antarctic Plate. It runs along the sea-floor from the Bouvet Triple Junction in the South Atlantic Ocean south-westward to a major transform fault boundary east of the South Sandwich Islands. Near the Bouvet Triple Junction the spreading half rate is 9 mm/a (0.35 in/year), which is slow, and the SAAR has the rough topography characteristic of slow-spreading ridges.
This is a list of articles related to plate tectonics and tectonic plates.
The borders of the oceans are the limits of Earth's oceanic waters. The definition and number of oceans can vary depending on the adopted criteria. The principal divisions of the five oceans are the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Southern (Antarctic) Ocean, and Arctic Ocean. Smaller regions of the oceans are called seas, gulfs, bays, straits, and other terms. Geologically, an ocean is an area of oceanic crust covered by water.
The Agulhas Basin is an oceanic basin located south of South Africa where the South Atlantic Ocean and south-western Indian Ocean meet. Part of the African Plate, it is bounded by the Agulhas Ridge to the north and the Southwest Indian Ridge to the south; by the Meteor Rise to the west and the Agulhas Plateau to the east. Numerous bathymetric anomalies hint at the basin's dynamic tectonic history.
The Northeast Georgia Rise is an oceanic plateau located in the South Atlantic Ocean northeast of South Georgia Island and west of the Falkland Plateau.
The natural delimitation between the Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans by the Scotia arc is the title of a scientific theory developed in Chile in which it was postulated that the boundary between the Southeast Pacific Ocean and the Southwest Atlantic Ocean would not be the meridian of the Cape Horn, but rather the Scotia Arc, an underwater orographic chain which links the Tierra del Fuego archipelago with the Antarctic continent.
The South Antilles or Antartilles is the name given in some parts of South America to the insular group of volcanic origin that extends in the form of a great sinusoid from the southeastern edges of the Argentine Sea to bordering the western coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula.
