Unit Eight: The Water Planet

Master essential **Earth Systems concepts**! This worksheet helps high school students review water cycle, atmosphere, and climate.

Water CycleUse this webpage on the water cycle to help you fill in the blanks below. The three major parts of the water cycle are evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Precipitation varies by area, with places like Chile receiving as little as one inch of rain per year, and places like Hawaii receiving as much as 600 inches per year. When precipitation lands on earth's surfaces in the form of rain, snow, sleet, or hail, it becomes runoff and begins flowing downhill due to gravity. Some of this runoff soaks into the ground, while the rest flows into rivers, lakes, and oceans, the largest reservoirs of water on earth. Evaporation then occurs, which changes liquid or frozen water into water vapor by using energy from the sun to break the bonds holding together water molecules. Water vapor then floats up into the sky, cools, and transitions back into liquid water and ice in a process called condensation. The tiny water molecules in the sky form clouds, which float because they are less dense than the air below. This is surprising, considering the average cumulus cloud weighs approximately 2.2 billion pounds! Surface Ocean Currents Label each current with one of the following choices: Kuroshio Benguela East Australian Canary Gulf Stream Peru Antarctic Circumpolar California Brazil Kuroshio East Australian Antarctic Circumpolar Peru Gulf Stream California Canary Benguela Brazil Layers of the Atmosphere Labeling Use the following choices to label the parts of the atmosphere: Stratosphere Mesosphere Ionosphere Exosphere Thermosphere Troposphere Troposphere Stratosphere Mesosphere Ionosphere Exosphere Thermosphere Layers of the Atmosphere Match the layer with the correct description. Stratosphere Layer contains O₃ molecules Thermosphere Temperature increases as it approaches outer space Ionosphere Inner layer of the Thermosphere Mesosphere Where most meteors burn up Exosphere Outer layer of the Thermosphere Troposphere Where a tornado would occur Sort the descriptions into the most appropriate category. Reasons for Standard Climate Change fluctuation in the shape of Earth's orbit fluctuation in the tilt of Earth's axis Reasons why Global Warming is Occurring forest removal burning energy sources such as coal Criteria for Determining a Region's Climate proximity to large bodies of land or water distance from the equator