Ocean circulation and coastal upwelling are the focus of this Grade 10 Science resource on Earth’s Systems, giving students practice explaining how density, wind, and Earth’s rotation shape ocean movement and coastal change.

Students work with key ocean-science concepts including thermohaline circulation, wind-driven gyres, coastal upwelling, tides, storm surges, sediment transport, and shoreline change. The resource also introduces evidence scientists use to investigate ocean conditions, including ARGO floats, satellite altimetry, and temperature-salinity profiles.

What Students Practise

• Explain how temperature and salinity differences affect seawater density and contribute to circulation.
• Describe how wind-driven gyres and Earth’s rotation influence surface ocean movement.
• Explain how coastal upwelling brings colder deep water toward the surface and affects marine ecosystems.
• Interpret how ARGO floats, satellite altimetry, and temperature-salinity profiles provide evidence about ocean conditions.
• Connect tides and storm surges with sediment movement and changes to shorelines.

Students respond to multiple-choice questions, true-or-false statements, short-answer questions, a labeled diagram, a categorization activity, and a short note task. The reading passage provides the scientific context needed to reason from information rather than relying only on vocabulary recall.

Designed for Classroom Use

This Earth Systems worksheet can support direct instruction, guided practice, independent work, review, or assessment of ocean circulation and coastal processes. The passage and questions provide a focused way to connect physical ocean processes with observations and evidence, while the short-answer prompts give students opportunities to explain relationships using scientific language.

Teacher Support Included

• Student worksheet focused on ocean circulation, upwelling, and coastal change
• Separate PDF answer key for checking student responses
• Student Notes lines at the bottom of the worksheet
• Teacher Guide within the Answer Key PDF with Learning Objectives, Teaching Tips, Discussion Questions, and Common Mistakes

Use this resource when teaching ocean circulation, marine processes, Earth’s systems, or coastal change and when students need practice connecting ocean observations to the physical processes that produce them.