Why is the Atlantic water blue in southern Florida and brown along the northern US coast?
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Lawrence B asked:
A friend asked me last week while we were on a golf vacation in Miami, I thought it had to do with the Atlantic ocean currents and pollution in the north but, I really have np ‘real’ idea.
Javier
A friend asked me last week while we were on a golf vacation in Miami, I thought it had to do with the Atlantic ocean currents and pollution in the north but, I really have np ‘real’ idea.
Javier
June 16th, 2009 at 1:38 am
While I cannot answer the question based on the areas you mention I can give an answer based on knowledge of coastal geomorphology.
Brown water is water with a lot of suspended sediment in it, while blue water is water with relatively little suspended matter. Nothing to do with pollution, a completely natural process. To contain suspended sediment there must be a source of fine sediments, silts and muds as only these are fine enough to remain suspended in sea water for long. This may be due to the nature of the local coastline, glacial till for example is a good source of fine sediment, or it may be due to sediment input from river systems. If the source of the sediment is the eroding coastline, you will often see that the sea is brown for a couple of hundred meters, in the area of sediment transport, but blue further out, once you get beyong the sediment transport zone and the water has little suspended sediment.