Global Climate Vulnerability and Resilience Flashcards
What is acidification?
The change in the chemical composition of soil (mainly a change in pH value) which may trigger the circulation of toxic metals.
What is afforestation?
Planting seeds or trees to make a forest on land that has not been a forest recently, or which has never been a forest.
What is albedo?
The proportion of solar radiation that is reflected by a particular body or surface. Snow has a high albedo and does not absorb heat, whereas concrete has a lower albedo and absorbs heat from the sun.
What is an aquifer?
A permeable rock that will hold water and allow its passage.
What does anthropogenic mean?
Human-related processes and/or impacts.
What does arid refer to?
Areas with less than 250mm of precipitation per year.
What is the atmosphere?
An open energy system receiving energy from both sun and earth, made up of 4 distinct layers: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere.
What is biodiversity?
The diversity of plant and animal life in a particular habitat or in the world as a whole.
What is a biodiversity hotspot?
An area with a particularly high level of biodiversity, e.g., Amazon Rainforest.
What is a biome?
A naturally occurring organic community of plants and animals.
What is the biosphere?
The regions of the surface and atmosphere of the earth or another planet occupied by living organisms.
What is a carbon sink?
An environmental reservoir that absorbs and stores more carbon than it releases.
What is climate change?
Long-term sustained change in the average global climate.
What is deforestation?
The process of destroying a forest and replacing it with something else, especially by an agricultural system.
What is desertification?
The gradual transformation of habitable land into desert.
What is an ecosystem?
A dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their non-living environment interacting as a functional unit.
What is energy balance?
The natural phenomenon whereby the energy entering Earth’s atmosphere equals the energy leaving it, keeping the temperature relatively constant over time.
What is an energy budget?
The balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing terrestrial radiation which prevents earth from heating up or cooling down.
What is the (natural) Greenhouse Effect?
The process by which certain gases allow short-wave radiation from the sun to pass through and heat up the earth but trap long-wave radiation from the earth, leading to warming.
What is the enhanced Greenhouse Effect?
Results from human activities which increase the concentration of naturally occurring greenhouse gases, leading to global warming and climate change.
What are external forcings?
Natural processes both outside and within the atmosphere that can force changes in climate.
What is global brightening?
An increasing amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface caused by an intensification of solar radiation.
What is global dimming?
A worldwide decline of the intensity of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, caused by air pollution and natural events.
What is global warming?
The increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air in the 20th and early 21st centuries and its projected continuation.