World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Both groups are major sources of free gas in India. The South Bassein and Tapti fields in the western offshore are the largest, and the onshore fields of Tripura and the Krishna–Godavari basin in Andhra Pradesh add substantially to output.

Free gas is gas produced from a gas reservoir in its own right, as distinct from associated gas dissolved in crude oil.

Answer: A

Correct answer: The Labrador Current

The Labrador Current is cold, flowing south from the Arctic along the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland and carrying icebergs with it - it was one of these that sank the Titanic in 1912. The general pattern is worth holding in mind: currents flowing away from the equator carry warm water, and those flowing away from the poles carry cold water. So the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio, both moving poleward on the western sides of their oceans, are warm; the Labrador, Canary, Benguela and Peru currents, moving equatorward, are cold. Where a warm and a cold current meet, the mixing brings nutrients up and produces exceptional fisheries - the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, where the Labrador meets the Gulf Stream, was the classic example. Such meetings also generate persistent fog. Cold currents alongside coasts also produce deserts, since air over cold water carries little moisture; the Atacama and Namib both owe their aridity to this.

Answer: B

Correct answer: An aquifer

An aquifer is a body of rock or sediment porous enough to hold water and permeable enough to let it flow - sandstone, limestone and unconsolidated gravel are typical. Groundwater held this way supplies a large share of the world’s drinking water and most of its irrigation. The two properties are distinct and both are needed: clay is highly porous but its pores are so fine that water will not move through it, which makes clay an aquiclude, a barrier rather than a store. A watershed is the divide between two drainage basins, a surface feature rather than a subsurface one. An artesian well is not a formation at all but a well drilled into a confined aquifer where the pressure is sufficient to drive water to the surface without pumping.

Answer: B

Africa is the second largest continent, covering about 30.1 million km².

Only Asia, at about 44.6 million km², is larger. North America follows at 24.3 million and South America at 17.8 million.

Answer: A

Deep oceanic trenches are produced by plate tectonics, specifically at subduction zones where one plate bends downwards beneath another. The Mariana Trench, nearly 11,000 m deep, is the deepest.

Sea-floor spreading is the complementary process at mid-ocean ridges, where crust is created rather than consumed, so it builds ridges rather than trenches.

Answer: A

All four are standard air-mass types. An air mass is labelled first by its moisture source - maritime (m) or continental (c) - and then by the latitude of its source region: tropical (T), polar (P) or arctic (A).

Combining the two gives mT, mP, mA and cP, together with cT and cA, so the option covering every listed type is correct.

Answer: C

Correct answer: The Tibetan Plateau

The Tibetan Plateau averages over 4,500 metres above sea level across an area of some 2.5 million square kilometres, which has earned it the name the Roof of the World. It is the highest and largest plateau on Earth. It was raised by the same collision that built the Himalaya: India driving into Asia thickened the crust to roughly twice its normal depth, lifting the whole region. Its influence on Asian climate is profound. It heats strongly in summer, and that heating helps drive the monsoon circulation; it also blocks cold northern air from reaching the subcontinent. Its glaciers and snowfields feed the Indus, Ganga, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers, which is why it is called the Water Tower of Asia and why change there matters to billions of people. The Deccan is India’s own great plateau, formed of basalt lava flows, and the Colorado Plateau is the one the Grand Canyon is cut into.

Answer: B

A sidereal month is the time the Moon takes to complete one orbit of the Earth measured against a fixed star - about 27.3 days.

The synodic month, from one new moon to the next, is longer at about 29.5 days, because in the meantime the Earth has moved along its own orbit and the Moon must travel further to return to the same alignment with the Sun.

Answer: B

Havana is the capital and largest city of Cuba, on the north-west coast of the island facing the Straits of Florida.

Founded by the Spanish in 1519, its old quarter is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Answer: B

Correct answer: The Red Sea

The Suez Canal cuts across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt to join the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, and through it the Indian Ocean. Opened in 1869, it removed the need to sail around the Cape of Good Hope and cut the voyage from Europe to Asia by thousands of kilometres. It is a sea-level canal with no locks, since the two seas differ little in height - which is what makes it far simpler in engineering terms than the Panama Canal, where ships must be lifted over an isthmus. It was nationalised by Egypt in 1956, precipitating the Suez Crisis, and remains one of the busiest and most strategically significant waterways in the world; its blockage by a grounded container ship in 2021 disrupted global trade within days. The Black Sea is reached from the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles and Bosporus, and the Caspian is entirely landlocked.