Climate change Flashcards
What is climate change?
A long term shift in the planets weather pattern or average temperatures
What is the quaternary period?
The last 2.6 million years of earth’s history
What is the Holocene period?
11,700 years ago to today
What is Pleistocene?
26 million years ago to 11,700 years ago
What were the colder periods called?
Glacial
What were the warmer periods called?
Interglacial
What is an ice age?
A period of long term reduction or increase of the temperate in the earth’s surface and atmosphere creating polar ice sheets
Where can we find evidence of an ice age?
- Northern & southern hemisphere
- Antarctica, North of North America, North of Europe, North of Asia
- Chile = Andes, Nepal, Himalayans
Name the evidence of climate change.
- Fossil Evidence
- Ice cores
- Historical records
- Ocean sediment
What does fossil evidence show us?
Climate from millions of years ago
What is the disadvantage of fossil evidence?
It is difficult to be precise
Give an example of fossil evidence.
Crocodile from 60 million years ago in North Dakota
What does ocean sediment show us?
The sediment has oxygen isotopes in them and scientist use them to calculate the change in atmospheric temperature
What do ice cores show us?
The temperature of the atmosphere from the past 400,000 years
What’s a disadvantage of ice cores?
Cannot look at older dates because there’s no ice old enough on the planet