Event Rules
Size of notes for the test
What is anything that fits in a binder?
Massive, rigid, irregularly shaped slabs of solid rock, ranging from 15 to over 200 km thick, that compose the Earth's lithosphere
What is tectonic plates?
Deflection to the right, creating clockwise gyres (e.g., North Atlantic Gyre).
What is Northern Hemisphere?
What would happen if water piles up, forcing it downward (downwelling)
Cold-core eddies often bring nutrient-rich, deep water to the surface, boosting plankton and fish populations (higher biomass)
What is nutrient transport?
How the score is judged
What is accuracy and quality?
The quality or degree of being saline
What is salinity?
Removes freshwater (increases salinity) or adds it (decreases salinity)
What is evaporation/precipitation?
What would happen if the surface currents move away from each other, creating a deficit of water that is replaced by deeper, colder, and nutrient-rich water through a process known as upwelling
What is surface divergence?
They play a crucial role in redistributing heat from the tropics to higher latitudes, which is vital for climate regulation
What is heat transport?
Calculator class permitted
What is class II?
What is asthenosphere?
Primary heat source, absorbed in the top 100m
What is solar radiation?
What would happen if tectonic plates under the ocean grind against each other, building up stress that is released in a sudden vertical shift, displacing massive amounts of water.
What is a tsunami?
Driven by the Global Conveyor Belt (thermohaline circulation) and wind-driven currents, which redistribute heat from the equator to the poles, regulating global climate
What is global ocean energy transport?
Time to complete the assignment
What is approximately 50 minutes?
Large systems of rotating ocean currents, like slow-motion whirlpools, driven by global wind patterns, the Earth's rotation (Coriolis effect), and landmasses
What is Gyres?
Different latitudes move at different speeds; points near the equator travel faster than those near the poles
What is Earth's rotation?
What would happen if fast-moving ocean currents (such as the Gulf Stream or Antarctic Circumpolar Current) become unstable, meander, and "pinch off" to form independent, rotating rings of water.
Ocean Eddies
The abnormal rise of water generated by a storm, over and above the predicted astronomical tide. While often confused with tsunamis, storm surges are strictly coastal phenomena driven by atmospheric forcing (wind and pressure) rather than geological shifts.
What is B, Surface Circulation?
The apparent deflection of moving objects (like air, water, or planes) on Earth due to the planet's rotation, causing them to curve to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere, influencing large-scale patterns like winds, ocean currents, and storm rotation.
What is Coriolis Effect?
The horizontal spreading apart of surface water currents, creating a region of positive divergence
What is Surface Divergence?
What would happen if the net motion of the upper ocean layer (approx. 100m) at an angle to the wind direction, caused by wind friction and the Coriolis effect.
What is Ekman Transport?
The process where ocean waves entering shallower water slow down, decrease in wavelength (get closer together), and significantly increase in height, becoming steeper and eventually breaking near the shore, concentrating wave energy as the seabed restricts water movement
What is Wave Transformation? (Shoaling)