Note: these questions should provide additional guidance in your preparation for Exam #3 on June 12. Remember that your responsibilities for the exam include lecture material from Ch 18 (Environmental Concerns; Marine Pollution), Ch 8, portions of Ch 9, but not Ch 10; the portions of your text covering these topics, videos: #7 and #8 , WWW Assignment #3 . I will not include much material from Ch 10.

1. Why are the words volume (or quantity), toxicity, and persistence important in a discussion of pollutants?... Hey what is marine pollution? Are all pollutants man made? Do some pollutants naturally occur?
2. What are the most significant heavy metal pollutants? What are some common industrial and commercial activities that involve these materials? How doe these materials get into the environment?
3. What are the two most abundant sources of petroleum introduced into the environment?
4. What is biological amplification and bioaccumulation? Are animals high on a food chain more or less at risk from highly toxic substances, like PCB, found in small concentrations in most areas of the sea ?
5. Be sure to work with material from WWW Assignment #3 concerning the various catagories of marine pollution.
6. What is eutrophication? How do excess nutrients artificially introduced into surface water (lakes or the ocean; called nutrient loading) effect water quality and habitats?
7. What causes uneven solar heating? How does this heat make it's way to atmospheric air? That is, how is atmospheric air mainly heated?
8. How does convection influence atmospheric circulation?
9. Is humid air more dense or less dense than dry air? What other change in air properties effects density? How does air density effect atmospheric pressure?
10. What causes the wind to blow? Does air move toward or away from a high pressure ("H") on a weather map? Which direction does wind flow around a low pressure center? Why?
11. Describe the atmospheric pressure cells on earth. Describe the prevailing winds they produce.
12. What areas on earth typically have very little (horizontal) wind? Why?
13. Distinguish between tropical and extratropical storms (your web assignment is a good place to look). What are the similarities? What are the differences?
14. Describe the life history of an extratropical and a tropical storm. Where do they originate? What are their typical trajectories (travel paths) and why? What are the associated wind patterns within these storm systems?, What about air masses? Do both types of storms have distinctive air masses. How do tropical storms die?
15. Why are the poles colder than the equator?  Which are primary and which are secondary effects?  Why do we have seasons?
16. What happens to air when it rises? when it falls? [In terms of it's volume, it's temperature and it's humidity]  What does this have to do with afternoon winds on the lake shore?  With Monsoons in India?
17. Describe the climatic belts, cells of rising and falling air, surface wind distribution on earth. What does the Coriolis Effect have to do with it?  What does convection have to do with it?
18. How are winds named? (relative to their direction of motion?)
19. What is the Coriolis Effect?  What causes it?  What does it have to do with the shape of the earth? How does it affect motion in the N. Hemisphere? the southern Hemisphere? the equator?  What does it have to do with the global circulation pattern?
20. Where and how do extratropical cyclones form?  What are their pressure systems; their air flow patterns?  Where do you get precipitation and why?  What do 2 air masses do when they come in contact?
21. Where and how do hurricanes form?  What conditions are necessary to initiate them? Where do you get precipitation and why? What is the eye of the hurricane?  what happens in it?  What aspects of hurricanes causes destruction? What is a storm surge? Why are they important
22. Describe the greenhouse effect.  How does it work?  What wavelengths of energy are we talking about? What is the overall impact on Earth's climate of the greenhouse effect?  What happens to the energy that is captured by a greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere?  What is the difference between the "greenhouse effect" and "global warming"?
23. Compare and contrast surface ocean currents with rivers.
24. What are the 2 main driving mechanisms for ocean currents?  (That is the forces that drive surface versus deep currents)  What is the ultimate source (driver) of ocean currents? (What drives those 2 things?).

On the diagram on the right, which are eastern boundary currents? western boundary currents?  Which areas are associated with upwelling?  With low biological productivity?

25. What is a geostrophic current?  What combination of forces and factors drive geostrophic currents?  Compare and contrast eastern and western boundary currents.  Why is one faster?
26. Where in the oceans do changes of state take place that result in the change in sea water salinity? Top, bottom? east? west? North? South? Equator? etc. Remember salinity can be higher or lower than normal!
27. Describe the greenhouse effect.  How does it work?  What wavelengths of energy are we talking about? What is the overall impact on Earth's climate of the greenhouse effect?  What happens to the energy that is captured by a greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere?  What is the difference between the "greenhouse effect" and "global warming"?
28. What are the natural sources and sinks for greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere ?
29. Is there any circumstance in which the ocean might be a source, rather than a sink for atmospheric CO₂?  What is the relationship between temperature and atmospheric CO₂ in Antarctica over the last 160,000 years?  How do we know? What are positive and negative feedbacks?
30.  What is ENSO? Why should a WMU student care? How often does ENSO occur?
31. What is the most obvious (easiest to measure) effect of El Nino?
32. What is La Nina? How are they recognized?
33. Describe the effect of western and eastern boundary currents on the climate of coastal areas, for example San Francisco on the west coast (eastern boundary currents) and Washington DC on the east coast (western boundary current) of the US.
34. Is the increased evaporation of sea water due to global warming a positive or a negative feedback for atmospheric temperature? Why? (note that this will cause a change in latent heat, and cloud cover (change in albedo), as well as a change in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.)
35. What about heating of the ocean (note that this will cause a change in the solubility of CO₂ , reduce formation of ice at the poles, and cause sea level rise due to thermal expansion of the water.)?
36. What about increased plant growth in response to increased CO₂ in the atmosphere?  Is it a positive or negative feedback for CO₂ in the atmosphere?
37. A lot of nations have agreed to reduce CO₂ emissions.  Is there evidence of a decrease of human generated CO₂ in the last few years?
38. What is the normal circulation pattern off of the coast of Peru and Chile on the west coast of South America (east side of the south Pacific ocean)? How does this change during an El Nino period?