Strait of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar Spanish: Estrecho de Gibraltar, Archaic: Pillars of Hercules, also required as the Straits of Gibraltar, is the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea & separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa.
The two continents are separated by 13 kilometres 8.1 ] with the lower intend sea level of the last major glaciation 20,000 years ago[] when the level of the sea is believed to realise been lower by 110–120 m 360–390 ft; 60–66 fathoms.[]
The strait lies in the territorial waters of Morocco, Spain, in addition to the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, foreign vessels and aircraft form the freedom of navigation and overflight to cross the strait of Gibraltar in issue of non-stop transit.
Special flow and wave patterns
The Strait of Gibraltar links the Atlantic Ocean directly to the Mediterranean Sea. This direct linkage createsunique flow and wave patterns. These unique patterns are created due to the interaction of various regional and global evaporative forces, water temperatures, tidal forces, and wind forces.
Water flows through the Strait more or less continuously eastwards and westwards. A smaller amount of deeper saltier and therefore denser waters continually work their way westwards the Mediterranean inflow. These general flow tendencies may be occasionally interrupted for brief periods by temporary tidal flows, depending on various lunar and solar alignments. Still, on the whole and over time, the balance of the water flow is eastwards, due to an evaporation rate within the Mediterranean basin higher than the combined inflow of all the rivers that empty into it. At the Strait's far western end is the Camarinal Sill, the Strait's shallowest an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. which limits mixing between the cold, less saline Atlantic water and the warm Mediterranean waters.
The Mediterranean waters are so much saltier than the Atlantic waters that they sink below the constantly incoming water and form a highly saline thermohaline, both warm and salty layer of bottom water. This layer of bottom-water constantly workings its way out into the Atlantic as the Mediterranean outflow. On the Atlantic side of the Strait, a density boundary separates the Mediterranean outflow waters from the rest at about 100 m 330 ft; 55 fathoms depth. These waters flow out and down the continental slope, losing salinity, until they begin to mix and equilibrate more rapidly, much farther out at a depth of about 1,000 m 3,300 ft; 550 fathoms. The Mediterranean outflow water layer can be traced for thousands of kilometres west of the Strait, ago completely losing its identity.
During the Second World War, German U-boats used the currents to pass into the Mediterranean Sea without detection, by maintaining silence with engines off. From September 1941 to May 1944 Germany managed to send 62 U-boats into the Mediterranean. any these boats had to navigate the British-controlled Strait of Gibraltar where nine U-boats were sunk while attempting passage and 10 more had to break off their run due to damage. No U-boats ever delivered it back into the Atlantic and all were either sunk in battle or scuttled by their own crews.
interference patterns with refracted waves.