Class 10 - Climate Change

What is the difference between climate and weather? Provide specific examples of weather and climate?

Weather can be predicted up to 10 days, while climate is a long term average of atmospheric conditions

Weather: this summer was the warmest summer

Climate: over 20 to 30 years every summer has been the warmest

What are some indicators of climate change rather than short term fluctuations in weather?

Ice caps and glaciers reducing → sea levels rising

Ocean heat conveyer system shutting down

Increased forest fires

More frequent severe storms

What are the 6 variables that influence global climate change?

Solar radiation: fluctuations in the amount of solar radiation reach Earth

Atmospheric gases: determines how much of the radiation reaches the Earth or is reflected into space (greenhouse gases absorb solar radiation)

Ground cover: reflects or absorbs solar radiation

Atmospheric currents: maintain global temperatures

Ocean Heat Conveyer: the oceans cycle the warm water from the equator to the arctic to keep global temps even

Milankovitch forcings: three cycles of change in Earth’s orbit and forces the globe into specific climates

Why is climate considered a complex system? What is the implication of this in regard to global climate change?

Considered a complex system because it is a network of variables that produce collective behaviors that cannot be predicted based on the analysis of individual variables

This implies that we cannot predict climate change by analyzing a specific variable

What was the Younger Dryas and when did it occur?

There was a global cooling when the Pleistocene moved into Holocene in 11,660 BP

What are two theories of what caused it?

Theory 1: the ice began to retreat which created a huge lake that broke a natural dam that caused the AMOC to shut down because of the sudden influx of cold freshwater

Theory 2: a comet hit Greenland and all that water broke down the AMOC (Clovis Climate Hypothesis)

What methods do archaeologists and natural scientists use to reconstruct past climate and climate change?

Ice coring: drilling into ice to research the rings on the ice

Ocean cores: examining the sediments and their rings

Pollen: tells you the plants that are growing in that area and are washed into bogs and lakes

Mapping the advance and retreat of glaciers

Packrat Middens: can put them in a sequence to shape the vegetation