turbidity current

American  

noun

Geology.

1. a turbid, dense current of sediments in suspension moving along the slope and bottom of a lake or ocean.

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turbidity current British  

noun

1. a swirling mass of water and suspended material stirred up by a tsunami, a storm, a river in flood, etc

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turbidity current Scientific  

/ tər-bĭd′ĭ-tē /

1. A swift downhill current in water, air, or other fluid, triggered by the weight of suspended material such as silt in a current flowing down a continental shelf or snow in an avalanche.

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Example Sentences

"Well, what if? What if Cascadia went off and triggered a weak turbidity current near the San Andreas, and then the San Andreas went off some time later and triggered a very coarse, sandy deposit to come down. It would create this upside-down doublet stratigraphy."

From Science Daily

"The BED is a 44cm sphere. It has an electronic package entombed within in it; it measures pressure and orientation, and will record how it moves down the canyon floor. And we use the BEDs to see the progression of the turbidity current as it rolls over one BED after another," he told BBC News.

From BBC

It was a turbidity current — an underwater landslide.

From Scientific American

By plotting the time and place of each cable break, the oceanographers could estimate closely how fast the turbidity current flowed.

From Time Magazine Archive