What causes the water to move closer to shore and farther away during the day?

Answer 1

• When wind blows over the ocean's surface, it transfers energy and creates waves.
• The crest is the top of the wave, the trough is the lowest point at the bottom between two crests, the wavelength is the distance between two wave crests, and the wave height is the distance between the bottom of the trough and the top of the crest.
• Waves move in an orbital, or circular, pattern. The wave base is equal to half of the wavelength.
• As a wave comes into shore, it drags on the bottom and comes in on an angle. When the wave gets to the shallow water at the shore, it becomes too steep to stay upright, and the top crashes forward and breaks.
• When waves hit the shore, they gradually wear it away by a process called erosion. Erosion can create wave-cut cliffs, sea caves, sea arches, and sea stacks.
• A current that runs parallel to the shoreline is called a longshore current. Sand and sediment from one part of the beach is deposited to another part of the beach by a process called longshore drift.
• Tides are caused by the moon's gravity pulling on Earth's oceans. There are two high tides and two low tides each day. The highest and lowest tides, called spring tides, occur during a new moon and full moon. The smallest tides, called neap tides, occur during the first and last moon quarters.
• The wind sets surface currents in motion. Differences in temperature and salinity set deep-water currents in motion.
• The Coriolis effect is the deflection of motion caused by Earth's rotation that causes moving objects to turn left in the Northern Hemisphere and to turn right in the Southern Hemisphere. Gyres are circular currents in all of the world's major oceans.
• Climate change influences sea level. Cooler temperatures (such as during an ice age) cause glaciers to form and sea level to drop. Warmer temperatures cause sea level to rise. Higher sea level causes more erosion along the shore.