The general movement of the currents in the northern hemisphere is clockwise and in the southern hemisphere is anti-clockwise.
This is due to the Coriolis force which is a deflective force and follows Ferrel’s law.
A notable exception to this trend is seen in the northern part of the Indian Ocean where the current movement changes its direction in response to the seasonal change in the directionof monsoon winds.
The warm currents move towards the cold seas and cold currents towards the warm seas.
In the lower latitudes, the warm currents flow on the eastern shoresand cold on the western shores [food for imagination].
The situation is reversed in the higher latitudes. The warm currents move along the western shores and the cold currents along the eastern shores.
At the surface, aspects of wind-driven circulation cause the gyres(large anticyclonic current cells that spiral about a central point) to displace their centres westward, forming strong western boundary currents against the eastern coasts of the continents, such as the Gulf Stream–North Atlantic–Norway Current in the Atlantic Ocean and the Kuroshio–North Pacific Current in the Pacific Ocean.
In the Southern Hemisphere the counterclockwise circulation of the gyres creates strong eastern boundary currents against the western coasts of continents, such as the Peru (Humboldt) Current off South America, the Benguela Current off western Africa, and the Western Australia Current.
The Southern Hemisphere currents are also influenced by the powerful eastward-flowing circumpolar Antarctic Current, which separates the Southern Ocean from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
It is a very deep, cold, and relatively slow current, but it carries a vast mass of water, about twice the volume of the Gulf Stream.
The Peru and Benguela currents draw water from this Antarctic current and, hence, are cold.
The Northern Hemisphere lacks continuous open water bordering the Arctic and so has no corresponding powerful circumpolar current, but there are small cold currents flowing south through the Bering Strait to form the Oya and Anadyr currents off eastern Russia and the California Current off western North America; others flow south around Greenland to form the cold Labrador and East Greenland currents.
The Kuroshio–North Pacific and Gulf Stream–North Atlantic–Norway currents move warmer water into the Arctic Ocean via the Bering, Cape, and West Spitsbergen currents.
