This major current system is a western boundary current that flows poleward along a boundary separating the warm and more saline waters of the Sargasso Sea to the east from the colder, slightly fresher continental slope waters to the north and west. The warm, saline Sargasso Sea, composed of a water mass known as North Atlantic Central Water, has a temperature that ranges from 8 to 19 °C (46.4 to 66.2 °F) and a salinity between 35.10 and 36.70 parts per thousand (ppt). This is one of the two dominant water masses of the North Atlantic Ocean; the other is the North Atlantic Deep Water, which has a temperature of 2.2 to 3.5 °C (4 to 6.3 °F) and a salinity between 34.90 and 34.97 ppt and which occupies the deepest layers of the ocean (generally below 1,000 metres [about 3,300 feet]). The North Atlantic Central Water occupies the upper layer of the North Atlantic Ocean between roughly 20° and 40° N. The “lens” of this water is at its lowest depth of 1,000 metres in the northwest Atlantic and becomes progressively shallower to the east and south. To the north it shallows abruptly and outcrops at the surface in winter, and it is at this point that the Gulf Stream is most intense.

The Gulf Stream flows northward along the rim of the warm North Atlantic Central Water, from the Florida Straits along the continental slope of North America to Cape Hatteras. There it leaves the continental slope and turns northeastward as an intense meandering current that extends toward the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Its maximum velocity is typically between 1 and 2 metres (about 3 to 7 feet) per second. At this stage a part of the current loops back onto itself, flowing south and east. Another part flows eastward toward Spain and Portugal, while the remaining water flows northeastward as the North Atlantic Drift (also called the North Atlantic Current) into the northernmost regions of the North Atlantic Ocean between Scotland and Iceland.

The southward-flowing currents are generally weaker than the Gulf Stream and occur in the eastern part of the North Atlantic Central Water lens or the subtropical gyre. The circulation to the south on the southern rim of the subtropical gyre is completed by the westward-flowing North Equatorial Current, part of which flows into the Gulf of Mexico; the remaining part flows northward as the Antilles Current. This subtropical gyre of warm North Atlantic Central Water is the hub of the energy that drives the North Atlantic circulation. It is principally forced by the overlying atmospheric circulation, which at these latitudes is dominated by the clockwise circulation of a subtropical anticyclone. This circulation is not steady and fluctuates in particular on its poleward side where extratropical cyclones in the westerlies periodically make incursions into the region. On the western side, hurricanes (during the period from May to November) occasionally disturb the atmospheric circulation. Because of the energy of the subtropical gyre and its associated currents, these short-term fluctuations have little influence on it, however. The gyre obtains most of its energy from the climatological wind distribution over periods of one or two decades. This wind distribution drives a system of surface currents in the uppermost 100 metres of the ocean. Nonetheless, these currents are not simply a reflection of the surface wind circulation, as they are influenced by the Coriolis force. The wind-driven current decays with depth, becoming negligible below 100 metres. The water in this surface layer is transported to the right and perpendicular to the surface wind stress because of the Coriolis force. Hence an eastward-directed wind on the poleward side of the subtropical anticyclone would transport the surface layer of the ocean to the south. On the equatorward side of the anticyclone the trade winds would cause a contrary drift of the surface layer to the north and west. Thus, surface waters under the subtropical anticyclone are driven toward the midlatitudes at about 30° N. These surface waters, which are warmed by solar heating and have a high salinity by virtue of the predominance of evaporation over precipitation at these latitudes, then converge and are forced downward into the deeper ocean.

Over many decades this process forms a deep lens of warm, saline North Atlantic Central Water. The shape of the lens of water is distorted by other dynamic effects, the principal one being the change in the vertical component of the Coriolis force with latitude known as the beta effect. This effect involves the displacement of the warm water lens toward the west, so that the deepest part of the lens is situated to the north of the island of Bermuda rather than in the central Atlantic Ocean. This warm lens of water plays an important role, establishing a horizontal pressure gradient force in and below the wind-driven current. The sea level over the deepest part of the lens is about one metre higher than outside the lens. The Coriolis force in balance with this horizontal pressure gradient force gives rise to a dynamically induced geostrophic current, which occurs throughout the upper layer of warm water. The strength of this geostrophic current is determined by the horizontal pressure gradient through the slope in sea level. The slope in sea level across the Gulf Stream has been measured by satellite radar altimeter to be one metre over a horizontal distance of 100 km (62 miles), which is sufficient to cause a surface geostrophic current of one metre per second at 43° N.

The large-scale circulation of the Gulf Stream system is, however, only one aspect of a far more complex and richer structure of circulation. Embedded within the mean flow is a variety of eddy structures that not only put kinetic energy into circulation but also carry heat and other important properties, such as nutrients for biological systems. The best known of these eddies are the Gulf Stream rings, which develop in meanders of the current east of Cape Hatteras. Though the eddies were mentioned as early as 1793 by Jonathan Williams, a grandnephew of American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin, they were not systematically studied until the early 1930s by the oceanographer Phil E. Church. Intensive research programs were finally undertaken during the 1970s. Gulf Stream rings have either warm or cold cores. The warm-core rings are typically 100 to 300 km (62 to 186 miles) in diameter and have a clockwise rotation. They consist of waters from the Gulf Stream and Sargasso Sea and form when the meanders in the Gulf Stream pinch off on its continental slope side. They move generally westward and are reabsorbed into the Gulf Stream at Cape Hatteras after a typical lifetime of about six months. The cold-core rings, composed of a mixture of Gulf Stream and continental slope waters, are formed when the meanders pinch off to the south of the Gulf Stream. They are a little larger than their warm-core counterparts, characteristically having diameters of 200 to 300 km (124 to 186 miles) and a counterclockwise rotation. They move generally southwestward into the Sargasso Sea and have lifetimes of one to two years. The cold-core rings are usually more numerous than warm-core rings, typically 10 each year as compared with five warm-core rings annually.

The Kuroshio

This western boundary current is similar to the Gulf Stream in that it produces both warm and cold rings. The warm rings are generally 150 km (93 miles) in diameter and have a lifetime similar to their Gulf Stream counterparts. The cold rings form at preferential sites and in most cases drift southwestward into the Western Pacific Ocean. Occasionally a cold ring has been observed to move northwestward and eventually be reabsorbed into the Kuroshio.