Map: A map illustrating the process known as thermohaline circulation, a circuitous path that water currents follow across the globe. Starting off the eastern seaboard of North America, cold, deep, salty water flows southward along the east coast of South America. The current then gradually turns eastward, before diverging into two separate currents in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean.
The more northerly of these currents gradually turns north into the Indian Ocean, following the east coast of Africa and then the south coast of Asia, until approximately the southern tip of India. Here the current becomes warm and shallow, and turns back south towards the middle of the Indian Ocean. The more southerly of the two currents continues in a southeasterly direction where it eventually enters the Southern Ocean, following the coast of Antartica, before gradually heading back north past New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands into the North Pacific Ocean. It then turns eastward, skirting the Bering Sea, before approaching Canada's west coast. Here the current becomes warm and shallow, and circle back towards Hawaii. The warm shallow current then follows a generally straight path, past the north shore of Australia, where it eventually rejoins the first current in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
The recombined warm shallow current then turns north, following the west coast of Africa and Europe, all the way to Iceland. At this point the current once again becomes cold, deep, and salty, winding back south around the southern tip of Greenland, whereupon it follows the eastern seaboard of North America back to its starting point and completing its circuit of the globe.