Climate Change - Exploring Earth Climate, Prevailing Winds, and How Heat Traps In Our Atmosphere

Exploring Earth’s Climate(minds-on) 

Climate change and Wildlife 

• Climate change directly impacts wildlife 
• The change in heat specifically can impact the natural homes of animals and food sources available to them

Importance of Earth’s climate system 

• Its climate system is super important in our daily lives such as 
• Seasonal temp. changes
• Blueprints for building design 
• Quality of the water consumed by humans/organisms
• Quality of the air 
• All these are directly connected to the Earth’s climate system 
• Main factors that control heat transfer and climate regulation on Earth 
• Wind currents 
• Ocean currents 
• Landscape features 
• Terrestrial ecozones 

Action

Prevailing winds 

Factor controlling the Earth’s climate system 

• Large convection currents in the atmosphere move warm tropical air towards the poles 
• Four main factors affecting regional climate
• Prevailing winds
• Blow predominantly from a single direction 
• Affect large regions of the earth (influencing the global climate)
• Responsible for the large-scale movement of atmospheric heat away from the equator
• 2 forces that pattern prevailing winds 
• Convection cells 
• Warm air rises and moves away from the heat source towards the cooler zones
• In the northern hemisphere, it moves the warm air towards the north pole and the same thing with the southern hemisphere
• Coriolis effect 

(Using a diagram to explain is easier than using words)

• Predicting prevailing winds 
• If the air is flowing away from the equator, it is moving eastward faster than the ground it passes over, so you feel a west wind
• If the air is flowing towards the equator, it is moving eastward slower than the ground it passes over, so you feel an east wind
• Ocean currents (and nearby water)
• Created by prevailing winds and the amount of salt dissolved in the water (in different locations and depths) 
• Influenced by such factors as the Earth’s rotation and the shape of the continents 
• Warm water tends to travel from the equator towards the poles and cold water tends to travel in the opposite direction
• They turn to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern (same as air currents) 
• Changes in direction or intensity of the ocean currents can have important consequences for the climate of most coastal regions (have a huge impact on the world’s fisheries) 
• Ocean as heat sinks 
• The water absorbs solar energy and it takes time to heat up but also cools down 
• During the winter the water is warmer than the land and it helps warm the land
• Cites near lakes and oceans experience more precipitation 
• The heat that is being absorbed by the ocean is helping moderate the impact of climate change (however it’s hard to determine how much heat it can continue to take)
• This makes the prediction of how fast climate change is happing difficult
• Elevation and landscape features
• The warm and moist air from the ocean comes up to the mountains it’s forwarded up (this side is called the windward side)
• The higher it climbs the more cooler it gets (because of the low air pressure) 
• Every km you go up the temperature drops approximately 6 degrees C
• Cooler air can’t hold as much moisture as hot air can
• The cool air reaches a point where it can’t hold the moisture and it releases rain/snow to the windward side of the mountain
• The air mass passes over the top of the mountain and to the other side (the leeward side) 
• The air becomes warmer as it goes down the mountain
• Terrestrial ecozones (the plant and animal life dominant in the area)
• Ecozone is a large natural area on Earth having roughly the same land, features, plants, and animals throughout 
• Canada has 15 terrestrial and 5 aquatic ecozones all varying in sizes
• Examples of some of them 
• Mixedwood Plains 
• Spanning southern Ontario and Quebec 
• One of the smallest ecozones 
• Has a mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees 
• Also has an extensive system of waterways 
• Boreal Shield
• Largest ecozone 
• Extends from part of Newfoundland to northern Alberta
• Poor growing conditions, trees are stunted due to cold temperatures, short growing seasons, acidic soil, frequent forest fires 
• Spruce trees are common (in the northern part of the ecozone)
• Deciduous trees such as birch and maple are found in the southern part 
• Hudson Plains 
• Extends from Manitoba, Ontario to Quebec
• Contains most of Canada’s wetlands, experiences cold long winters, insect-infested bogs (during summer), sparsely populated by human
• Southern Arctic 
• Located in northern Canada 
• Receives very little precipitation 
• World’s largest concentration of free-roaming large mammals, the caribou (are now threatened by climate change and resource development)

Jet streams 

• Approx. 10km above Earths surface are ribbons of extremely fast air moving from west to east 
• Caused by the contact between the cold and warm air at the boundary of the convection current 
• The strongest one occur where the cold polar air meets warmer air at about 60 degrees latitude (one in the north and one in the south) 

Understand the Greenhouse Effect

How heat traps in the atmosphere

• Earth emits heat energy into outer space in the form of infrared radiation 
• Any warm object will emit infrared radiation 
• You can’t observe infrared but you can feel 
• As long-wave infrared energy radiated away from the Earth’s surface and up towards outer space
• It can strike a carbon dioxide particle or another greenhouse gas in the atmosphere
• Greenhouse gases absorb longer infrared waves 
• Resulting in the visible light passes through the atmosphere but the infrared waves being captured inside 
• This causes the warming of our planet 

Atmospheric gas molecules 

• The other gases (1%) that make our atmosphere are responsible for the greenhouse effect 
• The six gases create the biggest greenhouse effect: water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons and nitrous oxide
• Detailed information about the gases 

Runaway greenhouse effect

•  Occurs if positive feedback loops lead to the release of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere 
• Unlikely to happen to Earth (it did happen on Venus)
• There is a worry that Earth will warm up and more greenhouse gases will be released

Changes in carbon dioxide levels

• Is an important greenhouse gas
• humans directly add this to the atmosphere, resulting in our current problem with global climate change

Carbon Cycle 

• As plants grow they remove carbon dioxide from the air
• Animals eat the plants using the stored carbon for their growth and survival 
• Carbon is released into the air as part of natural decay and normal respiration