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Indonesian ThroughflowThe Indonesian Throughflow is an ocean current that transports water between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean through the Indonesian Archipelago. In the northern part it enters the Indonesian seas through the Makassar Strait and Malacca Straits. It leaves the Indonesian seas, which function like a basin, south through the Lombok Strait and Timor passage. The direction of the transport is strongly temporal dependent on seasonal and annual climate, although the total net annual transport is mostly southward from the Pacific Ocean into the Indian Ocean. In the available data only an annual net northly directed transport through the southern boundaries was seen in 1998, which can be explained as post El Nio effects. This directly shows the relation between the global climate and the Indonesian Throughflow. An important feature of the Indonesian Throughflow is that because the water in the western equatorial Pacific Ocean has a higher temperature and lower salinity than the water in the Indian Ocean, the Throughflow transports large amounts of relatively warm and fresh to the Indian Ocean. When the Indonesian Throughflow through Lombok Strait and the Timor passage enters the Indian Ocean it is advected towards Africa within Indian South equatorial current. Here it eventually exits the Indian Ocean with the Agulhas current around South Africa into the Atlantic Ocean. So the Indonesian Throughflow transports a significant amount of Pacific Ocean heat into the southwest Indian Ocean, which is 10,000 km away from the Lombok Strait.
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