Q: Scientists refer
to the concentrations of sea ice at the Earth's poles as:
A. polar ice caps
B. polar ice cubes
C. polar ice cover
D. cool
Q: What is an ice
floe?
A. a fragment of sheetlike sea ice
B. glacial ice flowing out of mountainous terrain
C. a frosty dessert
D. sea ice that has melted
Q: What does sea ice
restrict the flow of between the atmosphere and ocean?
A. fish, water, salt
B. salt, heat, light
C. matter, momentum, heat
D. all of the above
Q: How does sea ice
moderate the temperature extremes of ice-forming regions?
A. ice releases heat when it forms, absorbs
heat when it melts
B. ice absorbs heat when it forms, releases
heat when it melts
C. sea ice traps heat inside tiny air bubbles
D. none of the above
Q: What are two ways
that density decreases as seawater changes its state from liquid to solid?
A. increasing volume, increasing mass
B. increasing mass, decreasing volume
C. increasing volume, decreasing mass
D. decreasing volume, decreasing mass
Q: Name the two usual
ways by which sea ice thickness increases to be greater than 3 meters:
A. wrinkling and rafting
B. crunching and smashing
C. ridging and rafting
D. piling and crashing
Q: Why is sea ice formation
the primary component of the polar hydrologic cycle?
A. it distills seawater
B. evaporation and precipitation rates are
very low
C. it rejects salt and sea ice drifts
D. all of the above
Q: Why is there a
transfer of heat during sea ice formation and decay?
A. ice releases heat when it melts
B. there are different energy requirements for
different states of water
C. heat must be absorbed when water freezes
D. solid water is more energetic than liquid
water
Q: Dynamic processes
have what defining characteristic?
A. they do not change
B. they are constantly changing
C. they are always static
D. they do not exhibit perceptible variation
Q: What type of electromagnetic
radiation is currently the most effective for the satellite detection of
sea ice?
A. visible light
B. infrared
C. microwave
D. ultraviolet
Q: The transpolar drift
stream is a sea ice spatial phenomenon of what scale?
A. megascopic
B. mesoscopic
C. microscopic
D. macroscopic
Q: The term, temporal,
refers to what type of scale?
A. one that is temporary
B. one based upon size
C. one based upon time
D. macroscopic
Q: What is the most
important factor controlling the formation and decay of sea ice?
A. the distance from the Earth to the Sun
B. the position of land masses
C. the position of the Gulf Stream
D. the angle of incoming sunlight
Q: Which hemisphere
is characterized as having land bordering its poleward sea ice extent?
A. Eastern
B. Southern
C. Northern
D. Western
Q: Why does north polar
sea ice extend into the middle latitudes?
A. the influence of the Gulf Stream
B. the influence of land masses
C. an absence of the effect of continentality
D. sea ice drift
A. Yes! The transpolar drift stream transports ice from the shallow Eurasian continental shelves, over the North Pole, to the Nordic Seas. Sea ice drifting at this scale involves several years and thousands of kilometers: the megascopic scale.
D.
YES! Salt rejection during the formation of sea ice is a distillation process.
It acts as a seawater filter, allowing only a fraction of the initial salt
content to become captured within the ice. Since evaporation and
precipitation rates in the polar regions are very small, the formation
and redistribution of sea ice is the only effective way that freshwater
is created and distributed in the polar regions [Aagard and Carmack, 1989].
B.
YES! As water changes its state from a liquid to solid, the energy requirements
necessary to maintain the new solid form are decreased. The extra
energy that was needed for the liquid state is then released into the cold.
Conversely, sea ice absorbs heat as it melts.