Social Science Section I - Conceptualizing Climate Change in the Past and Present

scientific approach that views the Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere as a single system

Earth System Science

ESS subsystems

• geosphere

• hydrosphere

• atmosphere

• biosphere

external forces that alter the balance of subsystems

forcings

forcings can cause what types of feedbacks

positive / negative

Earth’s subsystems interact with each other to influence weather and climate, and interactions occur on different

scales

other word for geosphere that incorporates the Greek word for rock and stone

Lithosphere

where do most of the interactions between the geosphere and other subsystem occur

crust

living organisms influence the composition of what part of the geosphere

soil

geosphere impacts weather and climate because mountain ranges cause _ to form and _ release gases and particles from within Earth

clouds + volcanoes

hydrosphere includes ice, which could be counted as its own subsystem called

cyrosphere

layers of atmospheric zones from lowest to highest

• troposphere

• stratosphere

• mesosphere

• thermosphere

• exosphere

concentration of certain gases released from the Earth’s other subsystems traps heat in the lower layers of the atmosphere

greenhouse gas effect

Earth has what type of climate system (not entirely self-contained)

open

Earth’s external energy comes from

Sun

3 climate change forcings

• solar energy

• volcanoes

• greenhouse gases

cooler temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere in the late 1600s and early 1700s corresponded to a period of fewer _ and low _

sunspots + solar activity

Milankovitch cycles happen in intervals of (3)

• 26,000 years

• 41,000 years

• 100,000 years

example of greenhouse gases inside cars

very hot inside after being parked in the sun with windows up

• solar radiation enters through windows and warms up interior

• windows trap heat

reactions to climate change caused by forcings

feedbacks

if the original forcing and feedback both push the climate in the same direction, the feedback is

positive

positive feedbacks push climate change towards

tipping points

melting ice is positive feedback because

ice reflects solar energy but water is exposed and absorbs more energy from the Sun

warmer conditions over lake can be negative feedback because

water in atmosphere increases and becomes cloud cover, blocking sunlight and forming snowstorms

as warmer air moves upward, cold air in polar vortex travels

south

physical repository of documents

archive

places that hold written documents about past climactic conditions

archives of society

nature itself poses clues for climate history

archives of nature

something observable in nature that gives an indication of past climate conditions

proxy

3 most revealing sources of climate history

ice + trees + soil

drilling long cylinders of ice out of deep glaciers

ice core sampling

as ice is formed, snowfall from each year becomes the new top layer, trapping

particles

age of tree can be identified by counting

rings

study of trees

dendrochronology

layers of _ on bottom of lakes and oceans contain information about historical composition of water

sediment

what can reveal data about past temperatures of oceans

coral sampling

oldest instrumental records of climate

1700

what was invented in 1700

thermometer

one area in which archives of society are more accurate than archives of nature

dating

what city received record-breaking heat in 2023 summer

Phoenix

Phoenix temperature records only go back to what year

1896

scientists record temperature at different _ of the atmosphere

layers

examples of narrative records of climate

weather diaries + ship logbooks

examples of weather records

• highwater mark

• art

• grain prices

4 fields of climate

• historical climatology

• paleoclimatology

• climate history

• history of climate and society

which 2 fields are essentially the same

paleoclimatology and historical climatology

climatology relies on archives of

nature

climate history relies on archives of

society

Swiss historian _ was an influential pioneer

Christian Pfister

environmental historian _ led the push to form and name the field of HCS

Dagomar Degroot

term that refers to the climate change era we live in today

Anthropocene

current era we are officially in

Holocene

when did Holocene begin

11.7 thousand years ago

epoch prior to Holocene

Pleistocene

when did Pleistocene begin

2.58 million years ago

stages of Pleistocene

• Upper

• Middle

• Calabrian

• Gelasian

when did Upper stage of Pleistocene begin

126 thousand years ago

when did Middle stage of Pleistocene begin

781 thousand years ago

when did Calabrian stage of Pleistocene begin

1.806 million years ago

when did Gelasian stage of Pleistocene begin

2.588 million years ago

what system/period are we currently in

Quaternary

what era are we currently in

Cenozoic

what eon are we currently in

Phanerozoic

who proposed that the Anthropocene should be recognized as a new geological time interval

Anthropocene Working Group

the AWG was created within what group

International Commission on Stratigraphy

the ICS recommended that the Anthropocene Epoch be made a formal interval within what

International Chronostratigraphic Chart

when did AWG propose that the Holocene ended

1950

who rejected Anthropocene in 2024

International Union of Geological Sciences

French historians who included climate in their narratives of global history

E. Le Roy Ladurie + Fernand Braudel

scholars who layer climate history over political history can show correlations between large-scale social events and

climate-related conditions

weakness of combining climate and political events

scholars could be biased in trying to prove connections

argument that climate sets the course for human history

climate determinism

history of climate and society scholars place emphasis on analysis of _, the approach that asks what specifically did the climate impact that triggered human response

causal mechanisms

1962 Rachel Carson’s book about commercial pesticides

Silent Spring

what scholar argues that humans are reshaping the configuration of Eart'h’s climate systems in a timespan exponentially shorter than natural processes

Dipesh Chakrabarty