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The Global Conveyor Belt Water

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The Global Conveyor Belt
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Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	high interest, readability grades 5 to 7
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	5.91

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		atmosphere, mass, affects, equator, increase, decrease, earth, form, impact, poles, cause, lighter, during, movement, dense, coast
	content words:		Atlantic Ocean, Antarctic Bottom Water, North Atlantic Deep Water, Bottom Water, Atlantic Intermediate Water, Atlantic Deep Water, Intermediate Water, Deep Water, Global Conveyor Belt, Indian Ocean

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The Global Conveyor Belt By Patti Hutchison

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¹     The continents are masses of land on the earth. Air masses move through the atmosphere. Did you know that there are water masses also? Differences in temperature and salinity cause movement of large masses of water in the oceans.
 
²     Temperatures on the surface of the ocean at the equator are very warm. But near the ocean floor, they are close to freezing. This deep, cold water comes from the polar seas.
 
³     When sea water freezes near the poles, sea ice forms. But the salt in the water does not mix in with the ice crystals. It builds up under the ice. This cold water becomes denser and sinks. It moves toward the equator along the ocean floor.
 
⁴     Other cold, deep water masses form in another way. Surface currents carry warm tropical water to the poles. As it cools, the water becomes denser and sinks to the bottom.
 
⁵     There are three water masses deep in the Atlantic Ocean. One is Antarctic Bottom Water. This forms when Antarctic seas freeze during the winter. This water mass is the coldest and densest of all. It is also the largest; it is found in all the oceans.

Paragraphs 6 to 13:
For the complete story with questions: click here for printable

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