Yesterday, June 8th, was World's Oceans Day, and there's a lot to celebrate about our oceans even if it's a day late! Many of us head to the beach to relax and forget about our everyday worries. Let's take a minute to learn about the largest waterways of the world.

Oceans Impact The Weather Significantly

Ocean currents bring cold and warm water from one place to another all across the world. These temperature changes are vital to the weather where they happen and also thousands of miles away. Take El Nino and La Nina patterns as an example. To put it simply, El Nino is a warming of sea surface temperatures while La Nina is the cooling of sea surfaces temperatures in the Central and Eastern Pacific Ocean. It might seem inconsequential to most folks, but it greatly influences the hurricane season in the Atlantic by either increasing or decreasing the shear in the atmosphere. Higher wind shear over the Atlantic typically observed during El Nino patterns will reduce the formation of tropical systems. Lower wind shear (typically in La Nina) will allow tropical systems to organize easier and allow them to become even stronger.

Underwater Volcanoes

Volcanoes are active every single day across the Earth. But did you know that most of the world's volcanic activity happens under the surface of the ocean? Volcanoes on land can erupt and cause huge ecological disasters and even change weather across the world for long periods of time. But underwater volcanoes can also create new islands that become habitable for lots of wildlife in the future. This is how the Hawaiian Islands formed long ago!

The Great Barrier Reef

When people thing of the biggest living organisms, they often think of elephants, whales, or trees. Some might even point out that a fungus called Armillaria ostoyea is the largest single species living organism in the world (beating out the quaking aspen tree colony in Utah)! But the Great Barrier Reef is the largest living organism structure in the world and covers 133,000 square miles. It's made up of multiple species of coral, so it's technically in a different category than the humungous fungus previously mentioned. It can even be seen from space!

There's A Lot Of Salt In The Ocean

This one seems like a no-brainer, but it's cool to put into perspective. The ocean contains so much salt  that you could cover the Earth's entire surface with it. In fact, if you covered just land, the salt would stack up to 500 feet tall! Now that's a lot of NaCl!

The Oceans Of The World Are Massive

Over 71% of the world's surface is ocean water! Oceans hold 96.5% of the world's water. Technically, the deep waters of the ocean are the world's largest habitat. Only about 10% of the world's oceans have been mapped, so who knows what other fun facts might come out about the this mysterious landscape in the future!