Sample quiz 3 answers:

1- D

2- E

3- C

4- A

5- C

6- B (sea water has highest TDS/salinity)

7- E

8- C (reduction of upwelling reduces available nutrients and breaks down food chain at its base; fish need to go deeper or farther away to find food and hence catch is reduced)

9- F (we talked about tree-ring reconstructions of streamflow in class; “proxy” means substitute or alternate source of data)

10- B (warmer-than-normal temperatures and lower-than-normal precipitation in the Southwest during La Niña events would be an example of such a teleconnection) We did not quite get to this in lecture, but we covered teleconnections with respect to the Younger Dryas event.

11- A WE DID NOT YET COVER THIS IN LECTURE- IT WILL NOT BE ON Q3, BUT COULD BE ON MID-TERM

12- D (Pacific Decadal Oscillation (also called PDO) – THIS TOPIC WILL BE COVERED IN LECTURE AFTER QUIZ. I will show on Friday how El Nino periods predominate after 1978 and La Nina more common before 1978 suggesting a 20-30 year cyclicity in their occurrence, i.e., “decadal” variability)

13. C (at higher temperatures more water vapor is required to saturate the air, i.e., the air “holds” more water vapor). So, half (50%) of saturation would represent much more water vapor present in air at the highest temperature given [=40C]

14. C (“sublimation” also transfers H₂O from ice/snow directly to the atmosphere, but “evapotranspiration” is much larger; evapotranspiration is transpiration by plants and evaporation, both of which occur over the Earth’s land surface; if “Earth’s surface” were referring to water/ocean, then only evaporation would be the primary flux)

15. (a) Cooling and (b) increase of salinity largely by exclusion of salt when water freezes to form sea ice (some saline water is delivered into the N. Atlantic by the Gulfstream current as well).

16. See p. 89 of Mann/Kump. Precipitation is predicted to increase near the Equator, decrease at low latitudes (30°), and increase at high latitudes (60°).

17. TH circulation is the "global oceanic conveyor belt". It transports heat and salt in an attempt to even out their abundance around the world ocean. Currently, TH circulation is largely driven by deep-water formation in the N. Atlantic near Greenland, where high density cold, saline water sinks and begins a journey around the world ocean flowing as a bottom current and then returning as a near-surface warm current. Any event that stops or slows deep- water formation will slow TH-circulation and thereby slow the return flow of surface warm water to the N. Atlantic. This happened during the Younger Dryas as the ice sheets melted.

18. Southeast Asian (Indonesian) rain forests in western Pacific Ocean Basin, Amazon rain forest, Alaska & Pacific Northwest (including boreal forests of Alaska and western Canada), New England states, South Africa (see Fig. 5-16, page 118 of Mackenzie; p. 91 of Mann/Kump) We did not get to this in lecture but it is in your El Nino readings.

19. WE DID NOT GET TO THIS MATERIAL IN LECTURE- IT WILL NOT BE ON QUIZ 3, maybe after midterm exam

20. Our discussion of global atmospheric circulation (convection cells) and sinking air at 30 degrees and 90 degrees (deserts)

21. Locally, thawing permafrost can damage structures (buildings, roads, pipelines) and cause “drunken” forests; globally methane (a potent greenhouse gas) may be released from the permafrost. WE DID NOT YET COVER THIS IN LECTURE- IT WILL NOT BE ON Q3, BUT COULD BE on Mid-term

22. SAME AS 19

23. see Eilperin and Murray & King for definitions (one refers to climate tipping point and the other to oil production tipping point).

24. If rubber ducks, being carried by huge container ships, should fall overboard, they will move in accordance with the prevailing winds and currents. An example of just such a case in the N. Pacific subpolar gyre (near Aleutian Islands) was discussed in class, with the ducks eventually making it into the N. Atlantic Ocean and landing on beaches in Maine and England.

25. Specific heat of water is higher than land, so land will heat up more in the summer than the adjacent ocean and hence the ITCZ will move farther north over land than over ocean.

26. This is a fascinating weather observation, but it is a weather event and not a climate observation. Climate is weather averaged over a long period of time- if the average number of 5-day January freezes over the last 20 years was significantly greater (or lower) than the average number of 5-day January freezes during 1900-1920, then we could talk about climate change over the past 100+ years.

27. A

28. D (evaporation)

29. B

30. latent heat = heat absorbed by water in going from liquid to vapor (about 600 cal per gram of water); this also mean that the water vapor has the potential energy and will release it back to the atmosphere when it condenses from vapor to liquid.

Polarity= positive and negative ends of the water molecule, which contribute to water properties such as cohesion (between water molecules) and adhesion between water molecules and container. An example of the latter is capillary rise.

Flux and reservoir= major parts of geochemical cycles such as the water cycle, the latter being the pools or locations where water resides, and the former being the transfers of water among different reservoirs.

The rest you should be able to decipher from your book(s) and notes.