Review Sheet for Midterm 1
GEOG 3A – Winter 2005
Jory Hecht
Tony Boughman
Tony Marca
A few studying tips from your TAs:
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Arrive on time and make sure you bring a pink scantron (available at campus
book store and Buchanan store) and a Number 2 pencil.
Come to the Monday night review session (1610 Broida Hall). You can bombard
the TA’s with all the questions you want.
Go over Prof. Siegel’s pdf files and animations on the class website.
Go to http://wps.prenhall.com/esm_christopherson_geosystems_5/ and do some
of the practice tests. Once you are on this page, scroll down and click on the
chapter of your interest. After you get to the chapter page, try some of the
different types of exercises that are listed on the left hand side of the page.
Visit your TA’s during their office hours.
Focus on concepts and processes and not just terminology.
Study graphs and maps in your textbooks. You might need to interpret them.
Chapter 1:
Figures: 1.14, 1.15, 1.17
Key Terms:
Latitudes and Parallels, Longitudes and meridians, Latitudinal zones, Great Circle Route,
Rhumb Line, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Equator, Arctic Circle, Antarctic
Circle, Remote Sensing, Scale, Projection, Prime Meridian
Geodesy: Measuring The Earth’s Shape And Size:
 What common three-dimensional shape does the Earth’s surface approximate?
 What do geodesists consider the exact shape of the Earth to be?
Hint: The answers to these two questions are different!
Latitude And Longitude Basics:
 Which angles do latitude and longitude measure?
 What is the name of the lines that measure latitude and which direction do they
run? Are they parallel to each other?
 What are the lines by which we measure longitude called?
 What is the name of the central line by which we measure longitude?
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Which direction do longitude lines run? Are they parallel to one another?
Review the North Pole/polar bear question from Lab 1.
Latitude, Longitude And The Seasons:
 Is the equator an arbitrarily chosen line, or does it have some significance
pertaining to seasons?
 Was the central meridian by which we measure longitude arbitrarily chosen or
does it have some significance pertaining to seasons?
 What is the significance of the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn in
terms of both the sun’s position in the sky and day length?
 What is the significance of the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle in terms of
both the sun’s position in the sky and day length?
 If you were to be stationed at a South Pole research station for one year, how
would day and night be distributed over the course of the year? Why is it that
way?
Great Circles And Small Circles:
 Does an airplane route from Santa Barbara to Hiroshima, Japan (both cities are
located at approximately 34¼ N) that does not stray from the 34th parallel the
quickest route to travel to Hiroshima? Why or why not? Does it follow a great
circle route or a rhumb line?
 Review Lab 1 questions
Time Zones:
 Why is there one time zone for every fifteen degrees of longitude? Why do time
zone boundaries usually not follow the meridians exactly?
 What is UTC? How do we use it to calculate time in other time zones?
 Why do we have daylight savings time?
 What happens if you are traveling westward and cross the International Date
Line? What if you cross it coming back to UCSB after a vacation in New
Zealand?
 STUDY Figure 1-17 and Lab 1
Scales And Map Projections:
 Concept of scale and how it is expressed on a map. What’s a small scale and
what’s a large scale? Hint: Think about the ratio of the distance on your map to
the real world distance.
 Differences between a globe and a two-dimensional map
 How does a Mercator projection distort the Earth’s surface? Which part of the
Earth is most distored?
 Why does Greenland look bigger than Brazil does on a world map that has a
Mercator projection?
Chapter 2:
Subsolar point, declination, Zenith, Solstice , Equinox, Circle of illumination, Day length,
Solar Insolation , March of the seasons, Revolution, Rotation, Tilt, Axial parallelism,
Sphericity, Seasonality, Light year, Speed of light, Perihelion, Aphelion, Plane of the
ecliptic, Axial tilt, Fusion, Sunspots, Solar activity, Solar wind, Electromagnetic
spectrum, Frequency, Wavelength, Solar constant, Solar altitude, Solar declination
Figures: 2.6, 2.7, 2.9, 2.10, 2.11, 2.15
Tables: 2.1, 2.3, 2.4
Understand The Geometry Of The Earth’s Orbit Around The Sun:
 What shape is the earth’s orbit around the sun? What is the plane running through
all of the points of the Earth’s orbit known as?
 Does the distance between the Earth and the Sun vary over the course of one
year? Is this a reason for the seasons?
 How does the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit change over millennia? What have
been the effects of these variations?
 What are the aphelion and perihelion?
 How does the Earth rotate as viewed from the North Pole?
 Why does the Southern Hemisphere receive more insolation during its summer
than the Northern Hemisphere does during its summer?
Basic Galactic And Solar Geography:
 Be familiar with where Earth and the Sun lie in relation to our Solar System and
the Milky Way Galaxy
 Know how to use scientific notation to express large numbers, such as those
between celestial bodies (stars, planets, moons, asteroids, etc.)
 How fast does light travel through a vacuum?
Solar Activity, Solar Energy Composition And Amount Reaching Earth:
 What is the name of a point where the sun’s rays are perpendicular to the Earth’s
surface (directly overhead) at a given moment?
 How does the angle of the sun’s rays hitting the Earth’s surface influence the
amount of received insolation?
 Understanding seasonal insolation patterns by latitude
 What is the solar constant and where is it measured in the atmosphere?
 Why is insolation distributed unevenly across the Earth’s surface?
 STUDY Figure 2.10!
Electromagnetic Radiation:
 Know what frequency and wavelength are!
 Study the figure of the electromagnetic spectrum and the different types of
wavelengths that are emitted (i.e. where is ultraviolet (UV) light on the spectrum
compared to infrared light?) STUDY Figure 2.6!
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What is the relationship between the energy an object radiates, wavelength, and
surface temperature?
What is the difference between the types of radiation that the sun and the Earth
emit? Why are they different?
Why is the intensity of radiation decrease as you go north or south from the
subsolar point? Relative intensity = sin(90 – latitude)
Earth’s Radiation Budget:
 Describe the latitudinal imbalance of the Earth’s radiation budget
 Why is there a net radiation loss in the Sahara Desert, which lies in the
subtropics?
Daylength:
 Understand what causes variations in day length
 How long are the days on the equator and on the poles in December? In March?
In June?
 What kind of day length variation is observed in Santa Barbara over the course of
a year?
 For how many days per year does the sun not set on the Arctic Circle? How
many days does the sun never rise?
 STUDY Tables 2-3.
Reasons For The Seasons:
 Five reasons: Revolution, rotation, tilt, axial parallelism, sphericity
 Which one of these reasons is the primary cause of seasons?
 What kind of seasons would we have if the tilt of the axis were 90 degrees? What
if there was not any tilt at all?
March Of The Seasons:
 Solstices (summer, winter) When do they occur?
 Equinox (vernal, autumnal) When do they occur?
 Are the seasons related to the aphelion and perihelion?
 Understand solar altitude, solar declination, and day length and be able to describe
the annual variability of each
 Understand how to chart approximate day length at key seasonal dates for
different latitudes
 Know the formula to calculate the latitude of any point given the latitude of the
subsolar point and the solar zenith or solar declination
 Altitude= 90- (latitude + declination)
Chapter 3:
Figures: 3-2a, 3-3, 3-6, 3-9, 3-14
Key Terms:
troposphere, tropopause, stratosphere, stratopause, mesosphere, mesopause,
thermosphere, thermopause, exosphere, ozonosphere, ionosphere, homosphere,
heterosphere, air pressure, kinetic energy, normal lapse rate, environmental lapse rate,
temperature inversion, ozone layer, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), carbon monoxide,
photochemical smog, sulfur dioxide, aerosols, particulate matter, anthropogenic
pollution, Clean Air Act, Montreal Protocol
KEY CONCEPTS
Characterizing the Atmosphere:
Describe the atmosphere’s vertical profile according to temperature, function, and
composition.
How thick is the atmosphere and how is its mass distributed vertically?
Why does pressure vary with altitude?
Which gases make up the majority of the atmosphere? What are their sources?
Why is the atmosphere crucial to life?
Describe the filtering effects of the atmosphere.
How was Earth’s ancient atmosphere different from today’s atmosphere?
Atmospheric Mixing and Air Pollution:
How long does it take for the atmosphere to mix between east/west, north/south?
What are the consequences of atmospheric mixing in the spread of pollution?
Why does temperature in the stratosphere increase with altitude? Why is this different
than the troposphere?
Define temperature inversion. What causes them to occur?
Name three geographic factors that contribute to pollution problems in Mexico City and
Los Angeles.
Describe some natural factors affecting air pollution.
Describe some human induced (anthropogenic) factors affecting air pollution.
Ozone
Why is stratospheric ozone important?
How has it been depleted and what is being done to remedy the predicament?
Describe the sources and effects of tropospheric ozone. What’s different about it than
stratospheric ozone?
Understand the chlorine-ozone catalytic cycle
Understand the graph that shows the difference between chlorine and ozone mixing ratios
that heavily influenced policy
Understand the significance of the Montreal Protocol
Chapter 4:
Important Figures
4.1, 4.5, 4.11, 4.13, 4.14, 4.15, 4.17, 4.23
Key Terms
Transmission, scattering, reflection, refraction, absorption, shortwave radiation,
longwave radiation, insolation, albedo, greenhouse effect, Rayleigh and Mie scattering
Electromagnetic Radiation II:
What kind of radiation does the sun emit? And Earth?
Between which wavelengths does most of the sun’s radiation fall?
Why is the sky blue? Why are sunsets red?
Why are clouds white?
Aerosols, Albedo and Greenhouse Effect:
Cloud-albedo forcing v.s. cloud-greenhouse forcing
What are aerosols and how do they influence incoming radiation? Temperature?
Are aerosols greenhouse gasses?
What determines albedo? What is the largest determinant of Earth’s albedo?
Explain figure 4.11
What are the main components of the greenhouse effect?
What would earth’s temperature be like without greenhouse gases?