Question
Read the following selection and answer the questions that follow.
Despite the daily heating and cooling of surface waters, ocean temperatures are much more stable than temperatures on land. Midlatitude oceans experience maximum yearly temperature variation of only around 10°C (18°F), and tropical and polar oceans are still more stable. The reason for this stability is that water has a very high heat capacity, a measure of the energy required to increase temperature by a given amount. It takes much more energy to increase the temperature of water than it does to increase the temperature of air by the same amount. High heat capacity enables the oceans to absorb a tremendous amount of energy from the atmosphere. In fact, the energy content of the entire atmosphere is equal to that of just the top 2.6 meters of the oceans. By absorbing thermal energy and releasing it to the atmosphere, the oceans help regulate Earth's climate.
According to the passage, which of the following will experience the LEAST amount of temperature variation?
Despite the daily heating and cooling of surface waters, ocean temperatures are much more stable than temperatures on land. Midlatitude oceans experience maximum yearly temperature variation of only around 10°C (18°F), and tropical and polar oceans are still more stable. The reason for this stability is that water has a very high heat capacity, a measure of the energy required to increase temperature by a given amount. It takes much more energy to increase the temperature of water than it does to increase the temperature of air by the same amount. High heat capacity enables the oceans to absorb a tremendous amount of energy from the atmosphere. In fact, the energy content of the entire atmosphere is equal to that of just the top 2.6 meters of the oceans. By absorbing thermal energy and releasing it to the atmosphere, the oceans help regulate Earth's climate.
According to the passage, which of the following will experience the LEAST amount of temperature variation?
Answers
Answered by
GPT-4o mini
According to the passage, polar oceans will experience the least amount of temperature variation. The passage states that midlatitude oceans experience a maximum yearly temperature variation of around 10°C (18°F), and it indicates that tropical and polar oceans experience even greater stability, implying that polar oceans would have the least variation among the mentioned ocean types.
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