Ocean and Atmospheric Dynamics
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Course Introduction
Ocean and Atmospheric Dynamics explores the fundamental physical processes governing the movement and interaction of the ocean and atmosphere. The course covers topics such as fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, wave propagation, geostrophic flows, and the influence of Earth's rotation and stratification on large-scale circulation patterns. Students gain an understanding of phenomena such as ocean currents, atmospheric jet streams, El Niño events, and the coupling between oceanic and atmospheric systems. Emphasis is placed on the mathematical modeling of these processes and their significance in global climate and weather patterns.
Recommended Textbook Oceanography 8th Edition by Tom S. Garrison
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Chapter 1: The Origin of the Ocean
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Q1) A(n) ____ is an explanation that can be tested by additional observations or controlled experiments.
A) question
B) science
C) hypothesis
D) scientific method
Answer: C
Q2) Which does not describe a law?
A) A law summarizes observations.
B) A law explains observations.
C) A law is the largest construct to summarize experimental observations
D) A law explains unvarying uniformity under the same conditions.
Answer: B
Q3) The scientific method is a useful tool beyond the confines of science fields. It can be used in everyday life, by any person.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 2: A History of Marine Science
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Q1) What vessel is attributed to being able to descend into the Challenger Deep?
A) Glomar Challenger
B) Trieste
C) Meteor
D) HMS Challenger II
Answer: B
Q2) Christopher Columbus was the first person to discover the "New World".
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) Longitude can be found using a protractor and the north polar star.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q4) Although John Harrison was a cabinetmaker, he was awarded a monetary prize for building an accurate clock used to determine longitude.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 3: Earth Structure and Plate Tectonics
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Q1) What features did Dr. Ballard not encounter during his National Geographic exploration to the mid-ocean ridge?
A) the rift valley
B) faults and fractures
C) lava flow
D) tube worms
Answer: D
Q2) Mountains are supported by the mechanical strength present in the asthenosphere due to the presence of heavy elements such as iron and magnesium.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) Density is defined as:
A) layers that are separated.
B) the speed at which a liquid moves.
C) the weight of a substance.
D) the mass per unit of volume.
Answer: D
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Chapter 4: Ocean Basins
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Q1) What was not a factor in making the mapping of the Earth's ocean more difficult?
A) The water covering our planet
B) The clouds in the atmosphere
C) Technology to measure depths
D) The gravitational pull of underwater features
Q2) What is a continental margin? What are the differences between active and passive margins? Include alternative names for the margins and the plate boundaries associated with each.
Q3) What offsets the mid-Atlantic ridge's movement at fairly regular intervals?
A) Hydrothermal vents
B) Cooling lithosphere
C) Transform faults
D) Seamounts
Q4) What transports most of the sediment that forms the continental rise?
A) Plate tectonics
B) Turbidity currents
C) Convection
D) Active margin geological activity
Q5) Describe how submarine canyons are formed? Where are they formed? How have past ice ages affected the formation of submarine canyons?
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Chapter 5: Ocean Sediments
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Q1) What organism is likely to be found in siliceous ooze?
A) Foraminifera
B) Coccolithophore
C) Radiolarian
D) Pteropod
Q2) What valuable commodity has yet to be commercially mined from ocean sediments?
A) Natural gas
B) Gravel
C) Diatomaceous earth
D) Manganese nodules
Q3) What is an example of terrigenous sediment?
A) Diatomaceous earth
B) Manganese nodules
C) Oolite sand
D) Quartz
Q4) What is the calcium carbonate compensation depth?
A) The depth at which calcium carbonate begins to precipitate into a solid.
B) The depth at which a calcareous ooze can start forming.
C) The depth at which calcium carbonate starts to dissolve.
D) The depth at which seawater becomes less acidic.
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Chapter 6: Water and Ocean Structure
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Q1) ____ connect(s) atoms by sharing the energy of paired electrons.
A) Covalent bonds
B) Hydrogen bonds
C) Cohesion
D) Adhesion
Q2) How do the properties of water help our oceans to remain in liquid form?
Q3) Scattering occurs more in water than air due to the greater density of water.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What effect does temperature and pressure have on the speed of sound when entering seawater?
A) The speed of sound increases as temperature and pressure decreases.
B) The speed of sound increases with temperature increases, but decreases with pressure.
C) The speed of sound decreases as temperature and pressure decrease.
D) The speed of sound is impacted by pressure but not temperature.
Q5) Sound and light waves bend because they travel at different speeds in different media.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 7: Ocean Chemistry
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Q1) What is the approximate mixing time of the ocean?
A) 160 years
B) 1,600 years
C) 16,000 years
D)1.6 million years
Q2) What is not a factor on the salinity of a particular region of ocean?
A) Evaporation
B) Precipitation
C) Freshwater run-off from the continents
D) Saturation levels
Q3) Residence times are dependent upon steady-state conditions and a well-mixed ocean.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is the greatest source of oxygen in deep water?
A) The respiration from bacteria
B) The lack of large quantities of organisms
C) Chemosynthesis
D) Polar waters that have sunk from the surface
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Chapter 8: Circulation of the Atmosphere
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Q1) What causes the solar heating of Earth to have seasonal variations?
A) The length of the Earth's rotation
B) The tilt of the Earth's axis from the sun
C) The Coriolis Effect
D) The shape of the Earth's rotation around the sun
Q2) The lower atmosphere is a homogeneous mixture of gasses with nitrogen and oxygen being the most abundant.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Why is air never completely dry?
A) Water vapor makes up as much as 4% of the atmosphere
B) Clouds and fog are actually liquid droplets of water
C) Water's very presence in the atmosphere accounts for dew, rain, and snow
D) All of these choices
Q4) How many atmospheric cells are present in each hemisphere?
A) 3
B) 4
C) 6
D) 8
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Chapter 9: Circulation of the Ocean
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Q1) What is the global conveyer belt referring to? How does this thermohaline flow transport heat throughout the world ocean? Include aspects of upwelling and downwelling.
Q2) What thrusts water masses that are engaged in the thermohaline flow of the world's ocean?
A) Density
B) Gravity
C) Trade winds
D) Coriolis Effect
Q3) Thousands of lost shoes in the Pacific helped oceanographers refine circulation models.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is the name for slow, deep currents beneath the pycnocline?
A) Surface currents
B) Convection currents
C) Thermohaline currents
D) Polar currents
Q5) What are the three types of geostrophic currents? What are their characteristics? Give at least one example of each type of current.
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Chapter 10: Waves
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Q1) What is the difference between a storm surge and a seiche? What are the behaviors and causes of each?
Q2) What happens when a tsunami approaches the shore?
A) Its velocity drops rapidly.
B) Its period remains the same.
C) Its wave height increases
D) All of these choices
Q3) Multiple wave trains exist at the same time and can interact with each other.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The tsunami that struck northern Japan in March 2011 began when a rupture along a submarine fault uplifted the sea surface by as much as 6 meters.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What occurs as a tsunami's circumference expands?
A) The wave height increases
B) The energy dissipates
C) The period increases
D) The period decreases.
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Chapter 11: Tides
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Q1) What are spring tides and neap tides? What tidal behaviors occur with each?
Q2) Tidal current become simpler when they are in the open ocean.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Who was the first to recognize the connection of the moon's position to the tides?
A) Isaac Newton
B) Aristotle
C) Galileo
D) Pytheas
Q4) What is one of the newest techniques employed to measure tides?
A) Using simple drogues
B) Using pressure-sensing transducers
C) Using drift bottles
D) Using variations in Earth's magnetic field
Q5) A tidal wave moves north in the Northern Hemisphere and south in the Southern Hemisphere.
A)True
B)False
Q6) What is the difference between a solar and lunar day? Which is longer? Why?
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Chapter 12: Coasts
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Q1) The resistance of some rocks to erosion is the reason sea cliffs, stacks, and arches are so uneven in their characteristics.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What type of reef is a ring-shaped island of coral?
A) Fringing
B) Barrier
C) Atoll
D) Mangrove
Q3) What is a tombolo?
A) An embayment parallel to the shore
B) Interconnected marshlands in a river
C) A passage to the ocean within a bar
D) A bridge of sediment that connects a sea island to the mainland
Q4) What is a fjord?
A) A broad, protected channel
B) A deep, narrow bay
C) The submerged limit of marine erosion
D) A retreating glacier
Q5) How do sediments move along a beach?
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Life in the Ocean
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Q1) Chemosynthesis is the main method of binding energy into carbohydrates on the planet.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What is rarely a limiting factor for marine organisms?
A) Salinity
B) pH
C) Hydrostatic pressure
D) Nitrogen
Q3) What are Darwin's postulates of natural selection?
Q4) Some ____ are considered to be extremophiles.
A) Eukarya
B) Archaea
C) Plantae
D) Animalia
Q5) What did Darwin suggest the driving force of evolution was?
A) Reproduction
B) Small genetic variation
C) Isolation
D) Large population size
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Chapter 14: Plankton, Algae, and Plants
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Q1) What new method is being used to calculate productivity by estimating the chlorophyll?
A) Biomass
B) Orbiting satellites
C) Radioactive tagging
D) Light-dark reactions
Q2) What is required to study very small plankton?
A) Plankton net
B) Specialized light intensity
C) Filtration
D) Cyanobacteria
Q3) What is a microecosystem?
A) A community engaging in a microbial loop
B) A community producing more than its consuming
C) A community used for planktonic breeding
D) A community operating on the smallest scale
Q4) Approximately 55% of the sunlight energy absorbed by diatoms is converted into energy for carbohydrate chemical bonds.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 15: Marine Animals
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Q1) What characteristics have made arthropods the most successful phylum? How do these animals grow? Can you think of any disadvantage of growing this way?
Q2) Which animal is considered to be a suspension feeder?
A) Fish
B) Sea stars
C) Sponges
D) Conches
Q3) What do squid use as a decoy defense mechanism?
A) Cnidoblasts
B) Internal shells
C) Coagulated ink
D) Propulsion
Q4) What do the simplest vertebrates lack?
A) Jaws
B) Notochord
C) Central nervous system
D) Teeth
Q5) The teeth in odontocetes are made of baleen.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 16: Marine Communities
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Questions
Q1) What is the significance of the coral reefs of the Southern Line Islands?
A) they represent the southernmost tropical reefs
B) they are like coral reefs before the impact of humans
C) they are highly impacted by humans
D) they have few fish and no top predators
Q2) Vent communities are as strange as a lost valley of prehistoric dinosaurs.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is the basis for life in the hydrothermal vent community?
A) The heated waters surrounding the vents
B) Chemosynthetic organisms
C) Whale falls
D) The biological productivity of the water above
Q4) What is environmental resistance?
A) The decline in population growth
B) The effect of limiting factors on the environment
C) The maximum population growth in an environment
D) The movement of one population against another
Q5) What are some of the adaptations exhibited by organisms living in estuaries? How do pelagic species use estuaries to their advantage?
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Chapter 17: Marine Resources
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Q1) Ships are responsible for transporting almost all the world's crude oil production.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What kind of resource is waste disposal?
A) Physical resource
B) Marine energy resource
C) Biological resource
D) Nonextractive resource
Q3) What is involved in mariculture production of species? Are mariculture productions only for producing the species as food? If not, what other reasons are there for mariculture?
Q4) What is the fastest-growing energy alternative to oil?
A) Wave power
B) Current power
C) Tide power
D) Wind power
Q5) How have the harvesting methods of fish evolved over recent years? Why has the cost of fishing increased?
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Chapter 18: The Ocean and The Environment
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Q1) What will make people change their way of using energy and perhaps viewing the world?
A) They need to see a maximum to their material gains and the distribution of the costs.
B) There need to be laws that direct the behaviors of the people.
C) There needs to be more science conducted and presented to the masses.
D) None of these choices.
Q2) What is favorable news associated with global warming-perhaps one of the few advantages?
A) There will be more rainfall
B) There will be a change in terrestrial ecosystems
C) The Northwest Passage will be open
D) There will be a rise in sea level
Q3) The carrying capacity of Earth has not quite been reached yet which is why our population is able to grow.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is the greenhouse effect? What are the gases involved in this process? What are some of the events that could happen if global warming progresses?
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