Exam 1 Flashcards
Sea-Ice Belt
Ice surrounding Antarctic
Changes with seasons
Makes Ross Sea waters calm and clear
Pack Ice
an expanse of large pieces of floating ice driven together into a nearly continuous mass, as occurs in polar seas.
Fast Ice
ice that extends out from the shore and is attached to it.
Keeling Curve
The Keeling Curve is a graph which plots the ongoing change in concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere since 1958. It is based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii that began under the supervision of Charles David Keeling.
Anthropogenic
(chiefly of environmental pollution and pollutants) originating in human activity.
Anthropocene
relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
Laurentide Ice Sheet
The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the northern United States
Maximum extent of glacial ice
Last Glacial Maximum
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was the last period in the Earth’s climate history during the last glacial period when ice sheets were at their greatest extension. Growth of the ice sheets reached their maximum positions 24,500 BCE. During the LGM, vast ice sheets covered much of North America, northern Europe and Asia. These ice sheets profoundly affected Earth’s climate, causing drought, desertification and a dramatic drop in sea levels
Terra Australis Incognita
a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. The existence of Terra Australis was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south
Remote Sensing
Observing glaciers through satellites?
Sea-level equivalent of ice
The change in global average sea level that would occur if a given amount of water or ice were added to or removed from the oceans.
LC-130 Hercules Aircraft
The primary mission of the LC-130 is supporting the scientific community in Antarctica by transporting cargo and personnel from the McMurdo Station to field stations and camps, including the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.
The aircraft are equipped with retractable skis that allow the aircraft to land on snow and ice as well as on conventional runways.
Vostok ice cores
Show changes in CO2 and temperature, correlated together
EPICA Ice Cores
obtain full documentation of the climatic and atmospheric record archived in Antarctic ice by drilling and analyzing two ice cores and comparing these with their Greenland
Greenland Ice core record
Ridges represent years
Oxygen/hydrogen isotopes
Methane
Carbon Dioxide
Nunatak
an isolated peak of rock projecting above a surface of inland ice or snow.
Often landmarks in regions with ice sheets
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts
Gaia Hypothesis
Earth is a superorganism that has the ability to regulate its body chemistry and temperature through natural feedback systems
What types of ice melting won’t result in sea level changes?
Ice shelves or iceburgs under the water
Which ice sheet is larger and thicker in Antarctica?
East
Northern Hemisphere Deglaciation
Ice retreat within the last 20,000 years
CO2 levels natural
Vary between 180 and 280 ppm in natural glacial and interglacial cycles
Recent CO2 Levels
Increase by 40% to >400 ppm
Insolation
solar radiation that reaches the earth’s surface. It is measured by the amount of solar energy received per square centimetre per minute.
Larsen B Ice Shelf Collapse
January 2002 partially collapsed (area of Rhode Island) with in 3 weeks
Disintegrate by end of the decade
Hotspot of global warming
Weddell Sea by Peninsula
Connected to inland glaciers - impact sea level
Wilkins ice shelf collapse
2008 a large portion disintegrated
Rising temperature and earthquakes played a role
Not connected to inland glaciers - negligible impact on sea levels
Effected by global warming
Antarctic peninsula
Infrared radiation
Heat radiation
49% of the heating of the Earth
Uniformitarianism
the theory that changes in the earth’s crust during geological history have resulted from the action of continuous and uniform processes.
Charles Lyell
Biosphere
the regions of the surface, atmosphere, and hydrosphere of the earth (or analogous parts of other planets) occupied by living organisms
Cryosphere
The cryosphere is the frozen water part of the Earth system. One part of the cryosphere is ice that is found in water. This includes frozen parts of the ocean, such as waters surrounding Antarctica and the Arctic. There are places on Earth that are so cold that water is frozen solid.
Exosphere
In the case of bodies with substantial atmospheres, such as Earth’s atmosphere, the exosphere is the uppermost layer, where the atmosphere thins out and merges with interplanetary space.
Lithosphere
the rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle.
Divided into tectonic plates
Phytoplankton
Play a critical role in Earth’s regulation of carbon dioxide levels because they use much of the atmospheric CO2 for photosynthesis. With warming temperatures, the ocean current is unable to circulate and provide these organisms with the nutrients needed to thrive, and therefore begin to die, in turn affecting a very large portion of the biological cycle and the earth’s temperature.
How fast is Arctic ocean sea cover disappearing?
Faster than model predictions
What parallels increasing CO2 levels?
Population, GDP, fossil fuels, land use changes
Svante Arrhenius
mid 1890s
examined CO2 possible role in glacial-interglacial cycles but ended up predicting a warmer future for Earth’s CO2 values continued to increase
How does the biosphere impact CO2 in the global carbon cycle?
On short and long time scales
How does the lithosphere impact CO2 in the global carbon cycle?
On long time scales
Superposition
states that sedimentary layers are deposited in a time sequence, with the oldest on the bottom and the youngest on the top
Milankovitch Cycles
Precession, obliquity and eccentricity of earth provide the timing for climate cycles by influencing the amount of insolation reaching areas of Earth
Eccentricity
Orbit shape
of an astronomical object is a parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle
Obliquity
Tilt
axial tilt, also known as obliquity, is the angle between an object’s rotational axis and its orbital axis, or, equivalently, the angle between its equatorial plane and orbital plane
Earth is 23°
Precession
Wobble
precession refers to any of several gravity-induced, slow and continuous changes in an astronomical body’s rotational axis or orbital path. Precession of the equinoxes, perihelion precession, changes in the tilt of Earth’s axis to its orbit, and the eccentricity of its orbit over tens of thousands of years are all important parts of the astronomical theory of ice ages.
Ice House Earth
the earth as it experiences an ice age. Unlike a greenhouse earth, an icehouse earth has ice sheets present, and these sheets wax and wane throughout times known as glacial periods and interglacial periods. During an icehouse earth, greenhouse gases tend to be less abundant, and temperatures tend to be cooler globally. The Earth is currently in an icehouse stage,[5] as ice sheets are present on both poles and glacial periods have occurred at regular intervals over the past million years.
Green House Earth
a period in which there are no continental glaciers whatsoever on the planet, the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (such as water vapor and methane) are high, and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) range from 28 °C (82.4 °F) in the tropics to 0 °C (32 °F) in the polar regions
Snowball Earth
A “snowball earth” is the complete opposite of greenhouse earth, in which the earth’s surface is completely frozen over; however, a snowball earth technically does not have continental ice sheets like during the icehouse state.
Estuaries
a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea
Proxy data
Nonmeteorological data
Ice cores, lake sediments
temperature, moisture, sea level, and chemical composition of the atmosphere
Proxy data
Nonmeteorological data
Ice cores, lake sediments
temperature, moisture, sea level, and chemical composition of the atmosphere
Reservoirs of Carbon
Ocean, rock, atmosphere, permafrost and biosphere
Store and release at different rates
Primary moderators of atmospheric and oceanic chemistry
Photosynthetic primary producing microorganisms
Past several billion years