Plate Tectonics

Continents drifting majestically from place to place breaking apart, colliding, and grinding against each other.
The Earth's rocky outer crust solidified billions of years ago, soon after the Earth formed. This crust is not a solid shell. It is broken up into huge, thick plates that drift at the top. 

Oceans

The Earth's oceans are all connected to one another. Until the year 2000, there were four recognized oceans: the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic. In the Spring of 2000, the International Hydrographic Organization delimited a new ocean, the Southern Ocean (it surrounds Antarctica and extends to 60 degrees latitude).

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/ocean/

The Water Cycle

Earth's water is always in movement, and the water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth. Although the balance of water on Earth remains fairly constant over time, individual water molecules can come and go in a hurry. Since the water cycle is truly a "cycle," there is no beginning or end. Water can change states among liquid, vapor, and ice at various places in the water cycle, with these processes happening in the blink of an eye and over millions of years.
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycle.html

The Early Solar System

There are complex organic molecules in interstellar space, on interplanetary dust, in comets, and in the meteorites that hit the Earth from time to time. It makes good chemical sense that such compounds form naturally in interplanetary or interstellar space, because gas clouds, dust particles, and meteorite surfaces are bathed in cosmic and stellar radiation. But life as we know it consists of cells, composed mostly of liquid water that is vital to life. It is impossible to imagine the formation of any kind of water-laden cell in outer space; that could only have happened on a planet that had oceans and therefore an atmosphere

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen1d.html

Properties of Ocean Water!

Ocean water is a combination of freshwater and a variety of dissolved ions of salts and other trace elements. While local

differences in salinity and temperature of ocean water occur, the composition of seawater is fairly uniform around the globe, and

has been for a major period of geologic time. Salinity is a measure of the amount of dissolved salts in seawater, and is measured

in parts per thousand.

http://www.flinnsci.com/Documents/demoPDFs/EarthSci/ES10386.pdf

Global Warming

• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies

 The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

Carbon Cycle

Carbon moves from the atmosphere to plants, from plants to animals,  from plants and animals to the ground, from living things to the atmosphere, from fossil fuels to the atmosphere when fuels are burned.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and traps heat in the atmosphere. Without it and other greenhouse gases, Earth would be a frozen world.

http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/co2_cycle.html