Changing Climate Flashcards
Explain the pros and cons of ice cores
Pros: Ice cores serve as excellent climate proxies, preserving a record of past atmospheric conditions. The ice layers trap various substances, such as gases, dust, and isotopes, providing a detailed timeline of environmental changes.
Pros: Ice cores are crucial for studying the history of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Trapped air bubbles in the ice enable scientists to analyse changes in carbon dioxide and other gases over thousands of years.
Pros: Ice cores can be obtained from various locations around the world, providing a global perspective on past climate changes. This allows scientists to assess the extent and synchrony of climate variations.
Cons: Extracting ice cores involves drilling and, in the process, destroying the core samples. This makes it difficult to revisit the same location for additional analysis or to use more advanced techniques as they develop.
Cons: Drilling and extracting ice cores in polar regions are expensive and require great expertise. This can limit the number of ice cores that can be obtained and analysed.
Cons: : Ice cores are mainly obtained from polar regions, limiting the geographic coverage of the data. This may not fully represent climate variations in certain regions, making it challenging to create a comprehensive global climate history.
Explain the pros and cons of dendrochronology
Pros: Dendrochronology provides precise dating of events by examining the patterns of tree rings. Each ring corresponds to one year of growth, allowing for accurate dating of archaeological, historical, or environmental events.
Pros: Tree rings can provide information about past climate conditions. The width, density, and composition of rings are influenced by environmental factors such as temperature, precipitation, and soil conditions, providing a natural climate archive.
Pros: Dendrochronology helps researchers study environmental changes over time. By analysing variations in tree ring characteristics, scientists can identify periods of drought, fire, or other disturbances that may have affected tree growth.
Cons: Dendrochronology is most effective for analysing events within the last few thousand years. Beyond that, the method becomes less reliable due to the scarcity of well-preserved ancient trees.
Cons: Dendrochronology is location-specific, meaning that it relies on the availability of suitable tree species with distinct annual growth rings. This limits its application in regions where such trees may be scarce or absent.
Cons: Human activities, such as logging and land-use changes, can disrupt the natural growth patterns of trees and affect the reliability of dendrochronological dating.
Explain the pros and cons of paintings and diaries as proxies for climate change
Paintings:
Pros: Paintings offer a visual representation of landscapes, weather conditions, and seasonal changes. Artists often incorporate environmental elements in their work.
Pros: Some paintings, especially those depicting landscapes or outdoor scenes, may span several years or decades, allowing researchers to infer long-term climatic trends.
Cons: Interpretation of paintings is subjective and can vary among viewers. Different artists may depict the same scene in different ways, and personal artistic choices may influence the representation of climate-related elements.
Cons: Artists may choose to highlight certain aspects of a scene while neglecting others. This selectivity can introduce bias, and certain climate-related events may be overrepresented or underrepresented in artistic depictions.
Diaries:
Pros: Diaries often contain personal observations and reflections, including mentions of weather conditions. These first-hand accounts can offer insights into how individuals experienced and perceived changes in climate.
Pros: Diaries may provide information on day-to-day weather variability, capturing short-term changes that might be missed in other historical records. This can be valuable for understanding fluctuations and extremes.
Cons: Like paintings, diaries are subjective, and individuals may describe weather conditions differently. Personal biases, preferences, and cultural influences can affect how climate-related events are portrayed.
Cons: Diaries are typically localized and may not provide a comprehensive view of climate conditions across different regions. Generalizing findings to larger geographic areas can be challenging.
Explain the pros and cons of Global temperature data for climate change
Pros: Global temperature data allows scientists to quantify changes in Earth’s temperature over time. Long-term temperature records provide a basis for detecting trends, such as overall warming or cooling patterns.
Pros: Temperature monitoring stations are distributed globally, providing broad coverage of the Earth’s surface. This allows researchers to analyse temperature trends at various spatial scales, from local to global.
Cons: Certain regions, particularly in developing countries or remote areas, may lack sufficient temperature monitoring stations. This can lead to data gaps and spatial irregularity, affecting the overall accuracy of global temperature assessments.
Cons: Temperature monitoring stations in urban areas may be influenced by the urban heat island effect, where local development and human activities contribute to higher temperatures. This can bias temperature records, especially in densely populated regions.
Explain the pros and cons Sea level changes for climate change
Pros: Sea level rise serves as a measurable indicator of global climate change. Monitoring sea level changes provides scientists with a precisely measurable metric to assess the impact of climate change over time.
Pros: Sea level changes affect coastlines globally, offering a consistent and comprehensive measure of climate-related impacts. It reflects the interconnected nature of Earth’s climate system and provides a universal metric for assessing climate change effects.
Cons: Sea level changes are not uniform globally. Regional variations are influenced by factors such as ocean currents, glacial melting, and tectonic activity. This regional variability makes it challenging to apply a one-size-fits-all approach when assessing impacts.
Cons: Sea level changes result from multiple contributors, including thermal expansion, melting glaciers, and ice sheets. Determining the relative contributions of each source can be complex, introducing uncertainties in predicting future sea level trends.
Explain the pros and cons of Shrinking glaciers and ice sheets for climate change
Pros: The reduction in the size and volume of glaciers and ice sheets serves as a clear and measurable indicator of global climate change. Monitoring these changes provides valuable information about the Earth’s response to increasing temperatures.
Pros: Studying shrinking glaciers and ice sheets contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms and processes involved in ice melt. This information is crucial for refining climate models and predicting future sea level rise and regional climate impacts.
Cons: Data coverage in some glaciated regions may be limited, especially in remote or inaccessible areas. This can result in incomplete datasets, making it challenging to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the status and changes in all glacier systems.
Cons: The quality and consistency of data collected from different sources, including satellite observations, aerial surveys, and ground-based measurements, may vary. Inaccuracies or discrepancies in data can affect the reliability of assessments of glacier and ice sheet changes.
Outline the causes of natural climate change (including the theories of sun spots, volcanic eruptions and Milankovitch cycles.)
The Earth has natural warming and cooling periods caused by
Milankovitch cycles or variations in the tilt and/or orbit of the Earth around the Sun (Wobble, roll and stretch theory).
Volcanic eruptions - during a volcanic eruption carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.
Sun spots - There can be fluctuations in the amount of radiation from the sun. If there is high amount emitted there will be an increase in Earth’s temperatures.
Explain the Milankovitch cycle
The Milankovitch cycles include: Global temperature increases and decreases depending on how close the planet is to the Sun. The tilt of the Earth changes. More tilt means warmer summers and colder winters, less tilt has the opposite effect. The Earth wobbles on its axis.
Explain the natural greenhouse effect
The natural greenhouse effect is how the atmosphere works to absorb and reflect radiation to keep the Earth warm. The sun emits short wave radiation towards the Earth. Some of it is reflected back to space and some is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases
Explain the enhanced greenhouse effect
The enhanced greenhouse effect, sometimes referred to as climate change or global warming, is the impact on the climate from the additional heat retained due to the increased amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that humans have released into the earths atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
What impact does co2, methane and nitrous oxide have on the atmosphere?
Greenhouse gases e.g. carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxides, act like a blanket and trap heat inside the Earth’s atmosphere. As concentrations of these gases build up, they are more effective at preventing heat being lost into space, contributing to the greenhouse effect. This can lead to global warming
Explain the impacts of climate change on a global level
Maldives – a low-lying chain of islands with a population of 400,000 will see devastating effects because of climate change. Maldives is a common tourist destination and the expected sea level rise will see many of the islands totally breached. Many Maldivians will have to relocate.
Sub-Saharan African countries like Mali, Chad, Sudan may become drier and prone to droughts, leading to starvation and possibly even civil war.
Relief web says that climate change is causing heavy rains (violent thunderstorms, above-normal rainfall) in places like Mali and Niger. However, the land is too dry to absorb the rising waters; Destructive river floods and numerous flooding episodes were thus observed in these countries in 2019
While climate change negatively impacts many countries, there are some positives of climate change. In the UK and north western Europe, warming will lead to a longer growing season to promote farming and increase food supply. New crops such as oranges and peaches could be grown.
Explain the impacts of climate change on the UK.
● Summers are expected to become drier but winters will receive an increase in rainfall. Increasingly extreme winters with heavy rainfall can create the risk of flash flooding, river flooding and a rise in the level of seawater. The higher temperatures will cause rivers to flood more frequently in winter a major climate change problem that the country will be facing. In addition, it will put stress on water resources, biodiversity and natural habitats. In the south of England.
● The UK could also face the threat to its water security and supply due to declining summer river flows, reduced groundwater replenishment and increased risk of drought. A situation like the heatwave of 2003 can become the norm. All of the UK’s ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2002. Heatwaves, like that of summer 2018, are now 30 times more likely to happen due to climate change.
