What is a thermocline?

Answer 1

A line where temperature changes.

Answer 2

A thermocline is an abrupt change in the temperature of ocean water within a small depth. Warm water has a lower density than cold water so it creates a thin layer, commonly called the thermocline, which separates the hot and cold water.

Warm, Surface Water.

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Thermocline

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Cold, Deep Water. Thermocline is located in a giant body of fluid such as air or water. It is the layer where climate changes more quickly than any other layer section below or above.

Answer 3

In a thermally stratified water body, such as a lake might be, the thermocline is the zone in the water column where the termperature transitions fairly rapidly from the warm surface waters to the cooler bottom waters. Thermal stratification might happen in a lake for several reasons, but one of the more common reasons is primary productivity. The only natural source of heat for a lake is normally sunlight. But sunlight is very rapidly quenched, or extinguished, in water. And of course, surface waters are most exposed to sunlight. In a productive lake, phytoplankton in surface waters will absorb sunlight and grow. One of the effects of all those phytoplankton cells is to shade out the waterbody, so that light will penetrate only to increasingly shallow depths. At the same time, bottom waters get increasingly shaded from sunlight. Thus, heat accumulates in surface waters, but not in bottom waters. Furthermore, because warm water is less dense than cold water, the warm water floats on top of the cooler water, resulting in stratification. The transition zone between the warm surface waters and the cooler bottom waters is the thermocline.