Oceans Control Global
Weather
Year of Discovery: 1770
What Is It? By pumping massive amounts of heat through the oceans, vast
ocean currents control weather and climate on land.
Who Discovered It? Benjamin Franklin
Why Is This One of the 100 Greatest?
The Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf Stream is the most important of our world’s ocean currents.
It is a major heat engine, carrying massive amounts of warm water north to warm Europe. It
has directed the patterns of ocean exploration and commerce and may be a major determinant of the onset of ice ages. Finally, it is the key to understanding global circulation patterns and the interconnectedness of the world’s oceans, weather, and climates.
American statesman, inventor, and scientist Benjamin Franklin conducted the first scientific investigation of the Gulf Stream and discovered its importance to Earth’s weather
and climate. His work launched scientific study of ocean currents, ocean temperature, the
interaction of ocean current with winds, and the effect of ocean currents on climate. Franklin’s discoveries mark the beginnings of modern oceanographic science.
How Was It Discovered?
Benjamin Franklin set out to map the Gulf Stream in order to speed transatlantic shipping. He wound up discovering that ocean currents are a major controlling factor of global
climate and weather.
Ocean surface currents were noted by early Norse sailors as soon as they sailed the
open Atlantic. Columbus and Ponce de Leon described the Gulf Stream current along the
coast of Florida and in the strait between Florida and Cuba. Others noted North Atlantic currents over the next hundred years. However, no one charted these currents, recorded them
on maps, or connected the individual sightings into a grand, oceanwide system of massive
currents.
In 1769 British officials in Boston wrote to London complaining that the British packets (small navy ships that brought passengers and mail to the colonies) took two weeks longer in their trans-Atlantic crossing than did American merchant ships. Benjamin Franklin,
an American representative in London at the time, heard this report and refused to believe it.
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