climate change

Question 1

long term patterns that give us predictions of what to expect

Answer 1

climate

Question 2

immediate impacts and what really occurs

Answer 2

weather

Question 3

climbing in recent years since 1980, most extreme at the north pole

Answer 3

global temperatures

Question 4

melting ice increases sun absorption which further increases rising temperatures in the north pole

Answer 4

albedo

Question 5

heat energy being absorbed by the oceans

Answer 5

ocean heat content

Question 6

spring snow cover decreases, mountain glacier retreat, continental ice sheet melting, arctic sea ice decreases, melting leading to sea level rise

Answer 6

results of increasing ocean heat content

Question 7

preserved physical information which replaces direct measurements, used to reconstruct climate records

Answer 7

paleoclimate and proxy data

Question 8

ship records, shells and corals, pollen fossils, tree rings, ice cores, and stalgmites

Answer 8

sources of paleoclimate data

Question 9

shifts change the climate over 10’s of millions of years

Answer 9

plate tectonics

Question 10

patterns in earth’s rotations creating ice ages

Answer 10

Milankovitch cycles

Question 11

11 year cycle of the intensity of sun spots and solar output

Answer 11

solar constant variability

Question 12

the cause of human influenced climate change

Answer 12

greenhouse gases

Question 13

computer software creating mathematical predictions of environmental processes

Answer 13

climate models

Question 14

predictions of past climate used to test climate models

Answer 14

hindcast

Question 15

scenarios for how people might behave in the future used to make varying predictions

Answer 15

shared socioeconomic pathways

Question 16

sudden and significant shift in climate including thermohaline shutdown, disintegration of ice sheets, dieback of the amazon, thawing permafrost with methane hydrates, and Indian monsoon changes

Answer 16

tipping points