Waves and Tides
What is defined the vertical distance between crest and trough?
What is wave height?
What expedition (1872–1876) is considered the beginning of modern oceanography?
What is the Challenger Expedition
What type of sediment is made from broken-up rock delivered by rivers, wind, glaciers, or volcanoes?
What is terrigenous lithogenous sediment
What force deflects moving fluids to the right in the Northern Hemisphere
What is the Coriolis effect.
What is the average salinity of seawater in PSU?
What is 35 PSU
What type of interference produces unusually large “rogue waves”
What is constructive interferences
What simple angle measurement allowed Vikings to determine latitude?
What is the angle of the North Star (Polaris) above the horizon
Which biogenic oozes form from CaCO₃ plankton shells?
What are calcareous oozes
What is the term for the 90°-to-the-right net motion of surface water under wind?
what is the ekman transport
Name the two most abundant ions in seawater that dominate salinity
what are sodium and chloride
The reason tsunamis behave as shallow-water waves even in the open ocean
What is their extremely long wavelength
What was Wegener’s primary evidence for continental drift involving shorelines?
What are the matching coastlines of continents
Why don't calcareous oozes accumulate in very deep water
What is dissolution below the CCD (carbonate compensation depth)
What is the major driver of deep-water formation?
What is high density caused by cooling and increased salinity
What happens to seawater pH when atmospheric CO₂ increases?
What is pH decrease
The reason many places experience two unequal high tides each day?
What is tidal inequality caused by the Moon’s orbital tilt and elliptical orbit?
What did magnetic “stripes” on the seafloor prove?
What is seafloor spreading and alternating periods of normal/reversed polarity
What does oxygen isotope data in foraminifera shells primarily tell us about?
What is the past global temperature or ice volume?
What global circulation connects deep and surface waters like a conveyor belt?
What is the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt
At what part of the water column do nitrate and phosphate peak
What is the deep ocean
In the dynamic tide model what do amphidromic points represent?
What are the locations of zero tidal range where cotidal lines rotate around
What is Earth’s primary heat source that drives mantle convection and plate tectonics?
what is radioactive decay
During the Last Glacial Maximum, how much lower was sea level compared to today?
What is about 120 meters lower
What phenomenon occurs when prevailing winds + Ekman transport pull surface water away from coasts or the equator?
What is upwelling
What is “residence time” for ions in the ocean
what is the average time an ion stays in seawater