Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/143

Rh TEMPERATURE OF SEA.] easterly and south-easterly winds of Scandinavia in winter lower the isothermals along these coasts. A striking feature of the winter isothermals of the Atlantic is the singularly high temperature along the centre stretching from Spitsbergen towards the south-west and extending in a modified degree as far south as the West Indies. In the Pacific this feature of the mid-ocean temperature is much less 133 pronounced, and the excess of temperature on the west of America over what occurs in the same latitudes of eastern Asia is not so great as the difference observable between the two sides of the Atlantic. The highest mean temperature in February (85) occurs in the Indian Ocean to the south-west of Sumatra, and there is a patch the FIG. 8. Isothermals of the Surface of the Sea for February, temperature of which is 84 to the north of Madagascar. The | In August (fig. 9) the southern half of the Red Sea shows a mean highest means in the Atlantic are 82 in the north-east angle of the Gulf of Guinea, and 81 off the north-east coast of Brazil. In the Pacific the highest are 83 to the north of the Fiji Islands and 81 near the Marshall Islands. temperature of 90, being the highest mean recorded for the ocean anywhere at any season. Patches showing a summer mean of 85 occur in the Chinese Sea to the east of Tonquin, in the Bay of Bengal to the east of southern India, about Socotra, and to the FIG. 9. Isothermals of the Surface of the Sea for August, west of Central America. But the most extensive regions of high west of Galapagos, where the mean is only 70, being 10 lower than temperature are in the west of the Pacific between long. 165 E. and the Philippines northward nearly to Japan and south ward to New Guinea, and the Gulf of Mexico and the adjoining part of the Atlantic as far east as long. 57 W. A patch of remarkably low temperature occurs in the Pacific a little to the what occurs anywhere else near the equator at this season. The influence of currents is strongly expressed in the temperature of all the oceans. In the south of Asia the monsoons are S.W., S., and S.E. Under the impulse of these monsoonal winds an extensive surface drift of the waters of the equatorial regions is