Exam 15: The Dynamic Ocean

You are body surfing in modest waves that are breaking just offshore. A particularly big one catches you off guard, flips you over and over, and deposits you on the shore. As you lie there in the sand, you think, hey, I just landed on_______ .

Coastal California is famous for fog and smog fog mixed with smoke.. Why is the California coast foggy/smoggy, whereas Houston, Texas, which is at similar latitude, might get occasional smog from too many cars, but fog is relatively rare?

You land your inflatable boat on a sandbar at high tide in Southeast Alaska, which has a large semi- diurnal tide. You intend to be away from the boat for 12 hours, but come back early after only 8 hours. Your boat is, unfortunately, 400m from shore. How long will you have to wait to be able to use your boat assuming you can't carry it.?

Tidal flats are submerged during _______ tide. Choose the best answer.

Large estuaries are more common on an_______ coastline.

A sand ridge connecting an island to the mainland or to another island is a _______ .

A barrier island is _______ .

What type of current is illustrated in the diagram below?

When caves on opposite sides of a headland unite, an_____ results.

The Bermuda high is a large, persistent high pressure system centered roughly on the island of Bermuda in the mid- Atlantic. Air circulates clockwise around high pressure systems because of the Coriolis effect. Is there any connection between Atlantic Ocean currents and this weather feature?

In the Cretaceous period of earth history there is clear evidence that the climate was much warmer than today. It was so warm that areas near the pole had tropical vegetation like palm trees, and there was almost certainly no sea ice and glaciers probably only existed at very high altitude. This produced widespread anoxia stagnant, no- oxygen condition. on the floor of the oceans. From your knowledge of ocean circulation, which of the following explanations could account for the anoxia?

The energy that drives surface ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream comes from_______ .

The energy that creates surface ocean currents comes from_______ .

Thermohaline circulation is_______ .

You are standing above a 20 m high sea cliff with a large beach below you. All around you is a flat surface with thin soil on a rocky base. In the distance you see another flat bench but it is about 30 m higher than you are. Where are you?

When a wave impinges on a beach, the particle motion changes from_______ , producing the characteristic curl form of _______ .

Why is it warmer in most of Europe than in northern California even though both are on the east side of an ocean and Europe is at higher latitude than California?

As a fluid air or water. moves toward an area of lower pressure in the Northern Hemisphere, the Coriolis effect results in_______ circulation.

Construction of a seawall produces an effect analogous to what kind of natural coastal feature?

Because of the Coriolis effect, surface ocean currents are deflected to the_______ of their path of motion in the Northern Hemisphere.