Atmosphere and Atmospheric Interaction Flashcards
The Amazon Rainforest is supplied nutrients by dust blown across the Atlantic Ocean, originating from ______.
Northern Africa
What is the SAL, and what does it stand for?
Saharan air layer, warm, dusty air over the Saharan region of Africa
What underlays the SAL in its extent over the Atlantic Ocean?
A shallow, 900-1800 m layer of cool, humid air (the marine layer).
How does the SAL remain warm despite being adjacent to a cool layer?
The suspended dust particles absorbs solar radiation.
What happens when the SAL engulfs a hurricane or a tropical precursor to a hurricane?
The system weakens
The SAL is rich in iron and is thus a contributor to _______ in the Gulf of Mexico.
Algal blooms
How is the SAL thought to potentially affect coral reefs in the Caribbean?
Dust may transported to the Caribbean my cause algal blooms
About half the atmosphere’s mass is concentrated within about _____ m of the Earth’s surface.
5500
About 99 percent of the atmosphere’s mass is concentrated within about _____ m of the Earth’s surface.
32000
Who were the chemists who first isolated various constituent gases from the air, demonstrating that air is a mixture of gases that are either elements or compounds?
Joseph Black, Daniel Rutherford and Joseph Priestley
The principal source of Earth’s atmosphere is ______, which is ______.
Outgassing, the release of gases from rock through volcanic eruptions and meteorites strikes
Perhaps as much as ___ percent of all outgassing occurred within a million years of the planet’s formation, though it continues today at a much slower rate
85
What was Earth’s primeval atmosphere primarily composed of?
Carbon dioxide (C02), with some nitrogen (N2), and some water vapor (H20)
What did Earth’s primeval atmosphere contain trace amounts of?
Methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), sulfur dioxide (SO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and hydrochloric acid (HCl).
Argon was added to Earth’s atmosphere by the radioactive decay of ____ in the planet’s bedrock.
Potassium-40 isotope
What effect on the composition of Earth’s atmosphere did high-energy solar ultraviolet radiation have?
caused the disassociation of water vapor into its constituent atoms, contributing a small amount of free oxygen while the hydrogen escaped to space.
From ______ to _______ years ago, the sun was _____, but Earth was still warm because ______.
4.5 billion to 2.5 billion, 30 percent dimmer, the abundance of CO2
Earth’s CO2-rich atmosphere was _______ than today.
10 to 20 times denser
The average surface temperature of Earth’s CO2-rich atmosphere was ________ as opposed to today’s, which is ________.
85 °C to 110 °C, 15 °C
By 4 billion years ago, the earth began ____ and the the Earth system changed.
cooling
Gaia cooling caused the formation of ______ from _____.
clouds, the condensation of water vapor
On early Earth, clouds produced rain, which in conjunction with ______ gave rise to the ocean.
runoff from landmasses
On early Earth, rains locked carbon into rocks and minerals by
dissolving it in the rainwater as carbonic acid, which then chemically reacted with bedrock.
