Natural Disasters Final Review

The Little Ice Age that affected Europe from about ________ CE lowered average annual temperature by only about 1°C but was enough to reduce crop yields, cause mountain glaciers to advance, and produce winters much more severe than in the 20th century.

1,400-1,900

The number of sunspots visible on the sun increases and decreases approximately every

11 years

In 2000, ________ of United States wildland fires were caused by lightning.

15%

The debris flow of Nevados Huascarán (Peru) travelled down valleys at speeds of ________ per hour.

170 km (105 miles)

The Fort McMurray fire in 2016 in Alberta, Canada, wildfire raged for ________.

2 months?

During the course of a year, the equatorial regions of Earth receive about ________ times as much solar energy as the polar regions.

2.4

Oxygen is a critical component in any fire. However, it is generally not a limiting factor in natural fires because oxygen (O2) makes up ________% of Earth's atmosphere.

21

The planet had an increase of about ________ people from 1900 to 2018.

6 bill

Between 1960 and 2009, floods in the United States produced an average of ________ in damage per year.

6.76 bill

Which of the following statements is about tsunami in the deep ocean?

??

Which of the following buildings would likely be the safest to be located in during an earthquake? A three-story old stone house A twenty-story office building with glass windows A top-heavy concrete parking garage A ten-story modern brick building A two-story modern wood frame house

A two story modern frame home

The sum of all the underlying causes can push a slope to the brink of failure, and then an immediate cause may trigger the movement. The immediate causes for mass movements include ________.

All of these choices are correct. heavy rains earthquakes the construction projects of humans thawing of frozen ground

In seismology, wave ________ is the height of the wave above a starting point.

Amplitude

Where is the best place on Earth to find meteorites?

Antarctica

Which of the following statements about Hurricane Hugo is true?

It was a powerful 1989 hurricane that killed 11 people and caused over $14 billion in damages.

The largest historic tsunami wave run-up ever recorded was caused by a massive rockfall into the water at ________.

Lituya Bay, Alaska

The number of active "hot spots" on Earth over the last 10 million years active is ________.

More than 100

________ is the weakest of the three Milankovitch parameters.

eccentricity

Comets are composed of ________.

ice and rocky debris

Which of the following was the biggest issue associated with Hurricane Harvey?

inland flooding

The ________ sizes of meteoroids are the ones most affected by passing through Earth's atmosphere.

intermediate

Three tornado outbreaks in the United States during 2011 from 14-16 April, 25-28 April, and 21-27 May each produced tornadoes numbering in the ________.

low triple digits

Solar flares and CMEs are caused by

magnetic fields on the sun

Flood basalts poured forth from the Moon about 3.8 to 3.2 billion years ago and created dark areas on the Moon called ________, and are prominent features on the lunar surface today.

maria

A large volcanic eruption can slightly cool the climate for a few years because ________.

material they eject into the atmosphere reduces the amount of sunlight reaching Earth

The danger of (Northern Hemisphere) storm surge is most extreme ________ of a hurricane, due to the forward motion of the storm motion and the direction of rotating winds.

on the front-right side

Greenhouse gases include ________.

ozone All of these choices are correct. methane (CH4) water vapor CO2

Which of the following has the lowest heat capacity?

quartz water granite air

If a stream experiences more energetic water flow, the stream ________.

responds by increasing the sinuosity of its channel pattern through meandering

Likely global climate changes in the 21st century include all but which of the following?

shorter duration of heat waves

If you lived in Northern Canada, you would expect to see Auroras as a correlation to

solar flare activity

Which moves more slowly through Space?

sun's rotation

Tornadoes preferentially kill all but which of the following?

teengaers?

The highest wind speeds of any weather phenomenon occur in ________.

tornadoes

Fire burns faster ________.

up a slope

The term "ladder fuels" refers to ________.

vegetation of varying heights, which allow fire to quickly climb upward

Liquefaction occurs when seismic waves cause ________.

water to be injected into sediment causing the grains to lose cohesion and behave like a fluid

What allows the warm pool of water to move east across the Equatorial Pacific Ocean in an El Niño event?

weaker than normal trade winds

Most of the deaths related to snow avalanches in the United States involve ________.

young males engaging in winter sports in the backcountry of western states

Which of the following locations has the highest return period for hurricanes?

New England Outer Banks, North Carolina northeastern Florida northwestern Florida

The North-South polarity of the sun

Reverses every 11 years Produces magnetic fields on the Sun Depends on sunspot activity All of these are correct Produces dark spots on the Sun

Why are rain and clouds common in a low-pressure system?

Rising air cools causing condensation.

Solar weather can potentially negatively affect all the following except

Satellites Astronauts Power grids Earthquakes Earth communications

The Italian city of ________ is trying to save itself from slow subsidence and sea level rise.

Venice

The greatest earthquakes in the world occur ________.

Where plates collide with eachother

Freshwater passing through uplifted sediments containing quick clay changes the sea salt content leaving quick clay with all but which of the following?

a higher salt content

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was generated by a magnitude 9.2 earthquake along ________ off the shore of Sumatra.

a subduction zone

Which of the following is a poor choice when trying to reduce the likelihood of a slope failure?

adding water to the slope during a cold snap to freeze it in place

Critical evidence for the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary impact includes ________.

an iridium anomaly in a thin layer of rock 65 million years old

The deadly 1998 tsunami in Papua New Guinea was caused by ________.

an undersea landslide triggered by an earthquake

As rotating winds pull into a tighter and tighter spiral, wind speeds increase due to the conservation of ________.

angular momentum

Hurricanes are called major hurricanes if ________.

are classified as category 3 or above on the Saffir-Simpson Scale

When ice dams in front of the largest glacial lakes failed, stupendous floods resulted whose passage is still recorded ________.

by a system of braided channels, now left mostly dry in lake sediments by abandoned waterfalls All of these choices are correct. by countryside stripped of all soil and sediment cover

Hurricane ________ (2017) surpassed Hurricane Katrina as the costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

Harvey

X-ray incidences from solar flares are assigned to x-ray flux classes. The strongest flux class is designated as

C?

A major comet or meteorite impact occurred in Mexico at the time boundary between the ________.

Cretaceous and Tertiary

What complication does "duff" add to job of firefighters?

Duff allows fire to smolder in the soil and restart the fire again after it appears to be out.

T/F- Abundant large diamonds, also commonly found in meteorites, occur in the K/T boundary clay layer.

FALSE

T/F- As a hurricane moves farther north, it weakens because the Coriolis effect decreases with distance from the equator.

FALSE

T/F- Creep is an ultra-slow, almost imperceptible upslope movement of the soil and lower bedrock zones.

FALSE

T/F- Fire hazards are smallest in those regions with the biggest climatic differences between their wet and dry seasons.

FALSE

T/F- Flaming combustion is the stage when the least amount of energy is released in any fire.

FALSE

T/F- If CO2 were not present in the atmosphere, the average temperature at Earth's surface would be about 34°C.

FALSE

T/F- Larger meteorite impacts occur more frequently than smaller impacts.

FALSE

T/F- Most basaltic rocks are high in Potassium-rich feldspar and muscovite mica.

FALSE

T/F- Quick clays are among the least mobile of all deposits and so provide favorable building sites.

FALSE

T/F- The Sun's energy heats all parts of Earth equally.

FALSE

T/F- The development of a hurricane begins with an Arctic disturbance which is a low-pressure zone that draws in a poorly organized cluster of thunderstorms with weak surface winds.

FALSE

T/F- The point where a fault first ruptures underground is known as the epicenter.

FALSE

T/F- Water molecules can attach their positive sides against clay minerals because clay surfaces are also positively charged.

FALSE

The difference between a solar flare and a CME is mainly

Spatial scale Origin from a sunspot Movement of a plasma cloud These are all differences Production of x-rays

In the law of ________, Steno stated that in an undeformed sequence of sedimentary rock layers, each sedimentary rock layer is younger than the bed beneath it, but older than the bed above it.

Superposition

T/F- A major release of methane hydrate, which is found just beneath the ocean floor, may have been the trigger for the final temperature increase near the end of the Late Paleocene Torrid Age.

TRUE

T/F- About 80 percent of the magma reaching Earth's surface is basaltic, with only about 10 percent andesitic and 10 percent rhyolitic.

TRUE

T/F- In many natural environments, fire is necessary to recycle nutrients and regenerate plant communities.

TRUE

T/F- Major southern California faults, such as the Imperial, San Jacinto system, Cerro Prieto, Elsinore, and Laguna Salada, also appear to be part of the San Andreas Plate boundary fault system carrying peninsular California to the northwest.

TRUE

T/F- Most of the meteorites collected on Earth's surface are "irons."

TRUE

T/F- Passing through the mantle below the asthenosphere, the seismic wave velocities vary but generally increase until about 2,900-km depth where P waves slow markedly and S waves disappear at the core-mantle boundary zone.

TRUE

T/F- The biggest floods known on Earth within the past two million years occurred during the melting of the continental ice sheets.

TRUE

T/F- The biggest known impact on Earth in the twentieth century was the Tunguska, Siberia, event in 1908.

TRUE

T/F- The deadliest earthquake in history occurred in 1556 when about 830,000 Chinese were killed in and near Xi'an on the banks of the mighty Huang River.

TRUE

T/F- The distribution of fossil organisms tells much about ancient climates.

TRUE

T/F- The energy released in a hurricane by forming clouds and rain is greater than the energy of its winds.

TRUE

T/F- The fires from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake did about ten times as much damage as the earthquake itself.

TRUE

T/F- The primary reason magma forms at subduction zones is that the subducting plate carries a cover of sediments, water, and hydrated minerals down with it, which lowers the temperature required for the adjacent overlying mantle lithospheric rock to melt.

TRUE

T/F- The volume of soil does not stay constant but instead swells and shrinks.

TRUE

T/F- Tidal bores flow upriver as waves and have been known to be over 2 m high.

TRUE

T/F- Undamaged coral reefs can grow and keep pace with a natural rise in sea level.

TRUE

T/F- Water circulating at thousands of feet below the surface can be heated to temperatures far above 100°C (212°F) without boiling because the pressure of the overlying groundwater body is so great.

TRUE

The sloshing of a swimming pool during an earthquake is called a seiche.

TRUE

Which of the following location is severely eroding?

Tampa, FL Miami, FL? Portland, ME San Francisco, CA

Episodes of climate change during the last 1,000 years include all but which of the following?

The Renaissance Warming

Efforts to control rivers include ________.

channelization levees reducing runoff dams All of these choices are correct.

Newton showed that differential tidal forces are inversely proportional to the ________ of the distance between the two objects.

cube

A widespread, powerful windstorm with straight-line winds is referred to as a ________.

derecho

Observed effects of global warming in recent decades include all but which of the following?

descending tree line in mountainous regions of Europe and New Zealand

Fire-dependent natural ecosystems include all but which of the following?

deserts

At the top of a hurricane, upper-level air is ________ outside of the eye wall.

diverging