Download Study Guide for Midterm 3

Study Guide for Midterm 3
Chapter 8 Weather
(1) What are the air masses influence the weather of North America in the Summer
and Winter?
(2) What is the primary characteristic of air mass weather?
(3) What is air mass modification?
(4) What are the criteria classifying air masses?
(5) Please order the moisture content (gH2O/kmAir) for the following air masses
from higher to low: mP, mT, cA cP?
(6) What are the primary atmospheric lifting mechanisms that produce precipitation?
(7) Which air mass provide the most moisture to the eastern 2/3 USA?
(8) What are environmental lapse rate, dry adiabatic rate and moist adiabatic rate?
(9) Why is there significant more precipitation on the west side of Cascade
Mountains than on the east side?
(10)
What are Chinook winds and how are they generated?
(11)
What are cold and warm fronts? How does precipitation characteristics
compare among the two fronts, and why?
(12)
How many atmospheric lifting mechanisms occur in the midlatitude
cyclone?
(13)
How many fronts exist in a midlatitude cyclone during its open stage?
(14)
Which thunder storm most likely produces tornadoes, air mass thunder
storm, sever thunder storm or supercell thunder storm?
(15)
Which part in the US has the most thunder storms to occur in a year?
(16)
Which part of the US do tornadoes occur the most?
(17)
What are the latitudinal rages in the tropics within which hurricanes
cannot originate due to weak Coriolis force?
(18)
What are the latitudinal ranges in the tropics beyond which hurricanes
cannot originate due to low sea surface temperature?
(19)
What is the season in which hurricanes are most likely occur, early
summer, mid-summer, early fall, early winter?
Chapter 9 Water Resources
(1) What is the primary moisture source of precipitation on land?
(2) How water enter the atmosphere on land?
(3) What is the water balance equation on a day-to-day basis? What is the water
balance equation on a long-term basis?
(4) Which term in the water balance equation relates to energy balance equation?
(5) What is soil porosity and soil volumetric content?
(6) What are the wilting point and field capacity for soil water content?
(7) Which soil is the best for plants: soil with the highest field capacity, soil with the
lowest wilting point, soil with the biggest difference between field capacity and
wilting point?
(8) How transpiration and evaporation differ?
(9) What is potential evapotranspiration? What does the ratio of precipitation to PET
tell you?
(10)
(11)
Based on the bucket model, when does run-off occur?
What are confined and unconfined aquifers?
Chapter 10 Global Climate System
(1) How climate are related to weather?
(2) What are the two major factors determine the climate of a particular region?
(3) What are the 6 major climate types based on temperature and precipitation?
(4) What is “hockey stick” refers to for global mean temperature?
(5) How global warming will lead to the change in the earth surface temperature,
uniformly warming around the globe, warm the land surface only, high latitudes
warms more than lower latitudes?
(6) What is the characteristic sea surface temperature feature during ENSO (El
Nino/Southern Oscillation)?
(7) What are teleconnections during an El Nino year?
Chapter 11 Dynamic Planet
(1) What are the major four scales of time in describing the Earth Geological history?
(2) How many massive species extinction occurred in the Earth history before the
current one?
(3) How the age of a particular rock on the Earth surface can be determined?
(4) Where is the Earth magnetic field generated?
(5) What technology do geologists use to determine the internal structure of Earth?
(6) What is magnetic reversal?
(7) What is Isostatic adjustment?
(8) What are the components of geologic cycle?
(9) What are the top three most abundant elements in the Earth Crust?
(10)
What are the three major rock types?
(11)
What evidence can be used as testimony for sea floor spreading?
(12)
The Earth is believed to be 4.6 billion years old, why we can not find
rocks on the ocean floor significantly older than 208 million years?
(13)
Where do you find the youngest rocks on the ocean floor?
(14)
What is the “continental drift”?
(15)
What are the 7 major continental plates?