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Descriptive Statements:
- Demonstrate knowledge of the structure, composition, and properties of the layers of the atmosphere, including their interactions with different wavelengths of energy.
- Demonstrate knowledge of global atmospheric circulation patterns (e.g., El Niño–Southern Oscillation, polar cells, jet streams), their causes (e.g., insolation differences, the Coriolis effect), and their effects on local climate and weather (e.g., monsoons, wind direction, particle deposition).
- Demonstrate knowledge of the types of surface winds (e.g., land and sea breezes, Föhn winds, trade winds), their causes, and effects on local climate and weather.
- Demonstrate knowledge of the types, properties, and formation of high- and low-pressure air masses, including how they move and change in response to interactions with other air masses or with local topography.
- Apply knowledge of the factors and conditions that lead to different weather conditions (e.g., temperature changes, cloud formation, precipitation), including those conditions caused by interactions with local or regional topographic features (e.g., adiabatic changes, inversions, advection fog, lapse rates).
- Demonstrate knowledge of the techniques and tools used to record, describe, and predict weather information (e.g., radar, anemometer, barometer, synoptic weather maps).
Sample Item:
If humidity and solar radiation remain constant, under which of the following conditions does adiabatic heating directly contribute to the production of hot, dry surface winds?
- A warm air mass moves rapidly over a desert during the daytime.
- A warm air mass slowly ascends across a midwestern prairie during the daytime.
- A cool air mass moves slowly in higher latitudes over a tundra during the daytime.
- A cool air mass rapidly descends the leeward side of a mountain slope during the daytime.
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
D. Air masses on the leeward side of mountains are typically dry and begin to descend because they are denser than the surrounding air. The air mass compresses and heats adiabatically as it descends because the total energy is concentrated in a smaller volume. The result of this interaction between the air mass and the topography is hot, dry winds.
Descriptive Statements:
- Demonstrate knowledge of the chemical and physical properties of fresh and salt water (e.g., density, specific heat, latent heat, pH), including how these properties affect energy transfers within the hydrosphere and between other Earth systems.
- Demonstrate knowledge of groundwater and surface water reservoirs, including the factors that affect water's spatial and temporal distribution, the factors affecting the movement of water across the landscape, and the water's movement between surface and groundwater reservoirs (e.g., infiltration, water tables, artesian wells, groundwater contamination).
- Apply knowledge of freshwater features (e.g., ice caps, glaciers, lakes, rivers, aquifers, wetlands), their formation, and the processes affecting them (e.g., seasonal turnover, eutrophication, climate change).
- Apply knowledge of the formation of waves and surface currents, including interactions with their confining features (e.g., ocean floor, shoreline, riverbeds).
- Apply knowledge of the causes of regional and global ocean circulation patterns (e.g., upwelling, thermohaline circulation) and the effects of circulation patterns on local climates.
Sample Item:
Regions that experience coastal upwelling, such as the shorelines of California, experience which of the following effects as compared to regions of downwelling?
- increasing oxygen levels in the deep ocean water
- displacing of nutrient-rich water toward the ocean floor
- increasing net productivity in the surface waters
- displacing cold water with warmer water at the surface
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
C. Coastal upwelling is a process by which cold water is drawn up to the surface to replace warmer water that has been pushed aside by surface winds. The colder water is typically much richer in the nutrients that help increase the net productivity of the coastal ecosystem.
Descriptive Statements:
- Apply knowledge of how substances (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, water) cycle within and between Earth systems.
- Apply knowledge of weathering, erosion, and depositional processes, including their rates, the agents of change (e.g., wind, water, ice, gravity, chemical weathering), and the ways in which these processes form and alter topographic features (e.g., karst topography, glacial landscapes, shoreline erosion, delta formation).
- Demonstrate knowledge of the factors that determine the climate of a region (e.g., temperature and precipitation patterns, topography, insolation), including the major climate zones, their features, and locations.
- Apply knowledge of historic climate patterns (e.g., ice ages, warm periods), climate proxies (e.g., tree rings, gas in ice cores, sediment cores), and the reasons for past and present shifts in climate.
- Apply knowledge of energy transfers between surface features and the atmosphere, the effects of these changes (e.g., albedo, insolation), and their short- and long-term cycles (e.g., seasonal changes, Milankovitch cycles).
Sample Item:
Which of the following biogeochemical substances does not have a significant atmospheric reservoir?
- water
- carbon
- nitrogen
- phosphorous
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
D. Phosphorus is a critical element for life, but it is not always found in biologically available forms. Its largest reservoir is the lithosphere, but phosphorus compounds can be found in the hydrosphere and biosphere as well. It can be present in the atmosphere, particularly as phosphine, but that represents a tiny fraction of the phosphorus present on Earth.
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