Ocean circulation (caused by the Coriolis effect) subdivides it into two largely independent volumes of water that meet at the equator, the North Pacific Ocean and the South Pacific Ocean (or more loosely the South Seas).
The centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere, as well as the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, are in the Pacific Ocean. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Oceania in the west and the Americas in the east.Īt 165,250,000 square kilometers (63,800,000 square miles) in area (as defined with a southern Antarctic border), this largest division of the World Ocean and the hydrosphere covers about 46% of Earth's water surface and about 32% of the planet's total surface area, larger than its entire land area (148,000,000 km 2 (57,000,000 sq mi)). The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions.
