Ekman Spiral: Wind-Driven Ocean Currents

This simulator renders the Ekman spiral — the real, measured pattern that a steady wind produces beneath the ocean surface once Earth's rotation is taken into account. Instead of dragging water straight downwind, the Coriolis force deflects the surface current 45° to the side, and each deeper layer keeps rotating the same way while decaying exponentially, tracing out a 3D spiral of arrows. Adjust wind speed, latitude and hemisphere, and turbulent eddy viscosity to see the Ekman depth, surface current speed and deflection angle respond, and watch the net depth-integrated water transport lock onto its textbook direction: 90° to the right of the wind in the Northern Hemisphere.