Lecture 13 Flashcards
What is a carbon footprint?
The total greenhouse emissions caused by processes, products, companies, industry sectors, individual consumers, groups of consumers geographically delineated areas.
What is carbon sequestration?
The process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
What is the greenhouse effect?
Increase of heat in a system where energy enters, it is absorbed as heat, and released sometime later
What is negative feedback?
Change in some condition triggers a response that decreases the changed condition
What is positive feedback?
Change in some condition triggers a response that intensifies the changed condition
What is weather?
the state of the atmosphere at a place and time as regards heat, dryness, sunshine, wind, rain, etc.
What is climate?
The average weather in a place over many years. Weather can change in just a few hours, climates (should) take hundreds, thousands, even millions of years to change.
How is climate regulated?
Climate is regulated by complex interactions among components of the Earth system:
- Sun, ocean, atmosphere, clouds, ice, land, and life
- Oceans cover 70% of Earth’s surface exerts a major control on climate
- Climate dominates Earth’s energy and water cycles
- Oceans can absorb large amounts of solar energy and re-distribute it
What is climate change?
There’s more averages, extremes, timing, and spatial distribution of diff extremes like hot & cold, cloudy & clear
How does the Sun effect the Earth?
The Sun is the primary source of energy for Earth’s climate system:
- sunlight reaches the Earth, some reflected back to space
- much of the sunlight that reaches Earth is absorbed and warms the planet
- when Earth emits the same amount of energy as it absorbs, balance, and its average temperature remains stable
- satellite measurements taken over the past 30yrs show that the Sun’s energy output has changed only slightly and in both directions
Who was Joseph Fourier?
Discovered the greenhouse effect and stuff
Who was John Tyndall?
worked in the 1860s
Figured out how greenhouse gases work and what they do/are
What is the natural greenhouse effect?
Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation from earth’s surface the emit the infrared radiation in all directions which creates a second source of radiation to warm the surface of Earth
Earth is warmer than it otherwise would be
Where do GHG emissions come from?
Describe the impact of a 1.5C degree increase on the Earth.
Also every degree Celsius of warming results in a 1.2 decrease in GDP
What are some examples of air contaminants?
Wild fires (particulate matter, ozone precursors, volatile hydrocarbons)
Possible More Plant Growth (leads to allergens and increased use of herbicides)
What ratio of species are at risk of extinction?
25%
How does temperature effect coral reefs?
Coral reefs can be bleached due to increase in water temperature
Lower pH decreases algae growth and decreases fish who feed at the coral niche
What is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
What is the Paris Agreement?
What are some ways to lower GHG emissions?
What is a system?
A system is a set of interconnected components.
In a system, the properties are not fully explained by an understanding only of its components.
That is, the system’s behavior or “effect” arises out of both its components and their interconnections, including feedback loops.
The interconnections create interactions among the components producing an emergent behavior that is different than the behavior of each individual component.
What are the characteristics of a system?
Is composed of parts
All the parts of a system must be related (directly or indirectly), or else there are really two or more distinct systems
Can be nested inside another system
Can overlap with another system
Consists of processes that transform inputs into outputs
Is a dynamic and complex whole, interacting as a structured functional unit
Energy, material and information flow among the different elements that compose the system
How are forest fires a positive feedback loop?
