Climate Change Flashcards
What is climate change
Is any significant change in the earths climate over a long period of time
What is the quaternary time period
Is the most recent geological time period spanning from about 2.6 million years ago
What happened to climate during the quaternary period
Global temperatures has shifted between cold glacial periods to warmer periods
How long do normal cold glacial periods last for
About 70,000 years
How long do warmer interglacial periods last for
About 10,000 years
What is global warming
Term used to describe the sharp rise in global temperature over last century
Give 3 evidences for climate change
Ice cores
Temperature data
Diaries and paintings
How are ice cores evidence for climate change
-Ice sheets are made of layers of ice
-scientist drill into these ice sheets to get long cores of ice
-by analysing the gases trapped in the ice they can tell what the temperature was each year
How are diaries and painting evidence for climate change
They can show what the climate was like in the past
Why aren’t paintings and diaries not very reliable evidence for climate change
As they give one persons view point
What is sea ice
Frozen ocean water
Give 3 natural causes of climate change
Milankovitch cycles
Sunspots
Volcanic activity
What is a milankovitch cycle
Variations in the way the earth moves round the sun
What changes in a milankovitch cycle
-The path of earths orbit changes to an oval route every 96,000 years
What are sunspots
Are cooler areas of the suns surface that are visible as dark patches
