Coastal Upwelling: Ekman Transport

Wind blowing across the ocean surface does not simply push water downwind — Earth's rotation deflects it, and friction spreads that deflection down through the water column into the classic Ekman spiral, first solved by Vagn Walfrid Ekman in 1905 to explain why Arctic sea ice drifts to the right of the wind. This simulator computes the real spiral from wind speed, wind direction, latitude and vertical eddy viscosity, renders it as a rotating stack of current vectors, and tracks the depth-integrated net transport that actually controls a coastline's fate: when it points offshore, cold nutrient-rich water wells up from below and feeds some of the ocean's richest fisheries; when it points onshore, surface water piles up and sinks instead.