Soc Sci S1 EVERYTHING Flashcards
A relatively new scientific approach to studying the natural world
Earth System Science (ESS) ; pg. 5
A subsystem that includes the layers of gases encircling Earth
atmosphere ; pg. 5
the 4 classifications of the ESS system
Subsystems ; pg. 6
the subsystem that includes earth and rock
Geosphere ; pg. 6
the subsystem that includes water and ice
Hydrosphere ; pg. 6
the subsystem that includes living organisms
Biosphere ; pg. 6
External forces that alter the balance of the subsystems
Forcings ; pg. 6
phenomenon where climate change causes a reaction that amplifies the initial direction of climate change
Positive Feedbacks ; pg. 6
phenomenon where climate change causes a reaction that goes against the initial direction of climate change
Negative Feedbacks ; pg. 6
the scope of the investigation; can be large or small, either geographically or chronologically
Scales ; pg. 6
Another word for geosphere and incorporates the greek words for rock or stone
Lithosphere ; pg. 6
a measure of time based on the record of rocks in which change is sometimes measured at the pace of millions or billions of years
Geological Time Scale ; pg. 7
The subsystem for ice
Cryosphere ; pg. 7
The concentration of certain gases (one is carbon dioxide) released from the Earth’s other subsystems traps heat in the lower layers of the atmosphere
Greenhouse gas Effect ; pg. 7
Pattern of Earth’s movement in relation to the Sun that influence the Sun’s impact on climate change overtime
Milankovitch cycles ; pg. 7
Point of no return when changes in a climate system become irreversible
Tipping point ; pg. 9
A physical repository of documents
Archive ; pg. 10
Natural features that show evidence of being impacted by specific climate conditions
Proxy ; pg. 10
Water is released from clouds
Precipitation ; pg. 12
Consists of a group of scholars who share common practices for studying the type of evidence they analyze
Scholarly field ; pg. 14
field that reconstructs past climates utilizing methods for studying sources in nature, like ice core samples
Historical climatology ; pg. 14
Another thing for historical climatology
Paleoclimatology ; pg. 14
academic field that uses methods of historians and studies sources produced by human to reconstruct past climate conditions
Climate history ; pg. 14
New interdisciplinary field that focuses on the history of the relationship between climate and human societies
History of climate and society (HCS) ; pg. 14
Matter left behind by formerly living organisms that can be burned to create energy that releases carbon
Fossil Fuels ; pg . 16
Method of telling historical narratives in which climate drives social and environmental changes overtime
Climate Determinism ; pg. 19
Something that causes something else to occur
Causal mechanisms ; pg. 19
A new geological era in which humans have become the driving force in planetary change ; the era in which we live today
Anthropocene ; pg. 5
Scholars and the public use this term to describe a complex process of changes in the natural world
climate change ; pg. 5
Refers to the design of greenhouses that capture heat from the Sun and are commonly used for agriculture
greenhouse gases ; pg. 8
Reactions to climate change caused by forcings
feedbacks ; pg. 8
The places that holds sources that were produced by humans and includes info about the climate
archives of society ; pg. 10
The place that holds sources from nature
archives of nature ; pg. 10
A technique that involves the drilling of long cylinders of ice out of deep glaciers
Ice core sampling ; pg. 10
The practice of gathering information from trees
Dendrochronology ; pg. 11
A study of climate that relies primarily on the archives of nature
Climatology ; pg. 14
When the world entered a new era ; the start of the Anthropocene
1950
In _______, humans use of fossil fuels has accelerated the Earth’s natural carbon cycle
The past couple of centuries
When cooler temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere was identified
late 1600s - early 1700s
Intervals in which the Earth completes different cycles
100,000 years, 41,000 years, and 26,000 years
Ice core from an old glacier can reveal what the conditions of the atmosphere were dating as far back as ______
hundreds of thousands of years
Conditions over how many years can human records describe
past hundreds or thousands of years
When the thermometer was invented
1700
When was Phoenix, Arizona on the news for record-breaking heat
summer of 2023
Temperature records for the city of Phoenix only date back to the year
1896
How long ago can instrumental records clearly show trends in climate
a little more than a century
When Christian Pfister was born
1944
Starting around when did people extract and released fossil fuels
about 200 years ago and increasingly since
When did the Holocene epoch start
11.7 thousand years ago
When did the Pleistocene epoch start
2.58 million years ago
When did the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) proposed that the Anthropocene should officially be recognized as a new geological time interval
2019
When did the International Union of Geological Sciences reject a proposal to formally name the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch
March of 2024
Around when was it advocated by the AWG that the Holocene ended and the Anthropocene began
the mid-20th century, around 1950
Since when have modern historical profession become formalized in Europe
1800s
Until around when did historians not include climate in their narratives of global history
2000
Before how many decades was the climate not included in traditional histories of the world
2 1/2 decades
To when does the chronological scale of human histories date back
5 or 6 thousand years ago
Scholars use archeological evidence to create historical accounts of what human life was like as far as how many years ago
40,000 years ago
Historical studies focus on human events in more recent past, such as what century
20th century
Rachel Carson birth years
1907-64
When was “Silent Spring” written
1962
The Swiss history that demonstrated that sources in the archives of society can be used to produced trustworthy climate reconstructions
Christian Pfister
Environmental historian who led the push to form and name the field of HCS (history of climate and society)
Dagomar Degroot
Wrote the book “Silent Spring”
Rachel Carson
A body of experts on the Earth’s geological epochs and proposed that the Anthropocene should officially be recognized as a new geological time interval
The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG)
Who rejected a proposal to formally name the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch
The International Union of Geological Sciences
What groups were mentioned by the International Union of Geological Sciences that will continue to use the term “Anthropocene”
Earth, environmental scientists, social scientists, politicians, and economists
French historians who did include climate in their narratives of global history
E. Le Roy Ladurie and Fernand Braudel
Scholars like who argue that humans are reshaping the Earth’s climate system in a timespan that is shorter than natural processes
Dipesh Chakrabarty
The first set of key concepts
the field of Earth System Science (ESS) ; pg. 5
Views the Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere as a single system
Earth System Science (ESS) ; pg. 5
ESS looks at the interactions between
air, water, land, and living organisms ; pg. 5
The second set of key concepts
How scholars create and organize the knowledge of past climate ; pg. 5
The third and final set of key concepts
The idea of Anthropocene ; pg. 5
What can the basics of ESS provide
am easy-to-understand way for non-specialists to obtain an accurate picture of how climate works ; pg. 6
What can alter the balance of the subsystems
External forces called forcings pg. 6
Notable events in climate history
The shifting of the Earth’s plates and the release and recapture of minerals and particles from within the Earth ; pg. 7
Where is most of the interactions between the geosphere and other subsystems occur
The Earth’s crust ; pg. 7
The most well-publicized aspects of current climate change focuses on which subsystem
hydrosphere ; pg. 7
The atmospheric zones from lowest to highest altitude
troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere ; pg. 7
Why do certain gases in the atmosphere cause the greenhouse effect
The gases are transparent to the Sun’s rays which allows them to reach the surface ; pg. 7
What happens to the Sun rays that are re-radiated by the Earth back into space
The rays lose energy and drop to the infrared levels. At that level, they are absorbed by the greenhouse gases and are trapped in the heat ; pg. 7
Influences the chemical and thermal constitution of the Earth’s subsystems
Life on Earth ; pg. 7
Radically accelerated the Earth’s natural carbon cycle which increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere above natural levels
Human use of fossil fuels ; pg. 7
What does it mean by the Earth’s climate system is an open system
The Earth’s climate system is not entirely self-contained ; pg. 7
Earth’s vital source of external energy
Solar energy radiated from the Sun ; pg. 7
What mixes to shape climate conditions
Solar energy and the Earth’s climate ; pg. 7
The 3 particularly influential forcings
solar energy, volcanoes, and greenhouse gases ; pg. 7
Isn’t completely consistent over time and space
the amount of energy transferred from the Sun to the Earth ; pg. 7
What happens when large volcanoes erupt and how can it create cooler conditions over vast regions
they emit a layer of dust and particles that can offer shade cover to large areas of the globe ; pg. 8
How can the cooling impact from volcanic eruptions be a great enough to influence large regions of the world and bring the average global temperatures down
Multiple volcanoes erupt ; pg. 8
Some of the gases that produce a greenhouse effect
water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane ; pg. 8
What kind of feedback is this: the original forcing and the feedback both push the climate in the same direction, either both warmer or colder
Positive feedback ; pg. 9
Why is melting ice classified as a positive feedback
The loss of ice warms the climate in addition to the initial warming ; pg. 9
What does the ice do to solar energy when it covers the surface of the ocean
it reflects the solar energy back away from the surface of the Earth ; pg. 9
What kind of feedback is this: Warmer conditions raise the water temp of the great Lakes, increasing water in the atmosphere. The increased water in the air over the lakes becomes cloud cover that cools the surface of the Earth by blocking the sunlight and can start snowstorms
Negative feedback ; pg. 9-10
What has weakened the polar vortex of cold air that circulates around the North Pole
The warmer temperatures in the oceans and atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere ; pg. 10
3 of the most revealing sources of climate history
ice, trees, and soil ; pg. 10
Ice cores are analyzed how
In layers ; pg. 10
Ice cores from where can reveal atmospheric conditions from the past
An old glacier ; pg. 11
How can the age of a tree be identified
By counting the rings of a tree that has been cut through ; pg. 11
What can a tree reveal in relation to climate
If the year was dry or rainy and can even show the weather conditions of individuals seasons in a year ; pg. 11
What can contain info about the historical composition and content of water
The layers of sediment or mud on the bottom of lakes and the ocean ; pg. 11
The oldest instrumental records
The thermometer ; pg. 11
Scholars utilize a system of what that is similar to those used to study the archive of nature
system of proxies ; pg. 11
One area in which the archives of society are more specific than the archives of nature
dating ; pg. 12
Why did the city of Phoenix review attention in the summer of 2023
for record-breaking heat ; pg. 12
Scholars use information in what as proxies for estimating the information that modern scientific instruments can record
narrative records ; pg. 13
Groups that are highly specialized at analyzing specific types of sources
Professionally trained scientists, social scientists, and historians ; pg. 13
The fields of what offer complementary views of climate history
historical climatology, paleoclimatology, climate history, and the history of climate and society (HCS) ; pg. 14
Some of the skills that historical climatologists must learn and practice
collecting samples from nature, operating the machinery or instruments used to analyze the samples, analyzing data obtained from nature to reconstruct past climate conditions, and communicating findings from nature according to the standard written conventions of the field of climatology ; pg. 14
The skills that climate historians bring to the study of climate include
the ability to read the language and script of the texts being analyzed, the ability to find the texts, analytical techniques, and the contextual knowledge to interpret the texts accurately, and the ability to formulate and communicate historical narratives based on textual evidence ; pg. 14
What did Christian Pfister do
He showed that sources in the archives of society can be used to produce trustworthy climate reconstructions ; pg. 14
The need for the field of history of climate and society (HCS) stemmed from recent expansion of studies from which fields
climate history and paleoclimatology, archeology, economics, geography, linguistics, and genetics ; pg. 15
Why does HCS seek to apply rigorous analytical methods from the field of history
To make sure that sufficient evidence exists to support claims about climate causing certain social conditions ; pg. 15
HCS scrutinizes
causal claims ; pg. 15
HCS pays careful attention to
scale ; pg. 15
What concept refers to the scientific divisions of geological time that correspond to climate conditions of the Earth over millions of years through to the present
Anthropocene ; pg. 16
What is the current epoch
Holocene ; pg. 16
At the end of what did the Holocene epoch begin
The last global ice age ; pg. 16
What epoch started before the Holocene
Pleistocene ; pg. 16
An important reason to use the term Anthropocene
Other scholars and the public often refer to the Anthropocene already ; pg. 17
Since when have professional historians been telling stories about global history
Since the modern historical profession became formalized in Europe in the 1800s ; pg. 17
what did modern historians, until around 2000, not include in their narratives of global history
climate ; pg. 17
What has happened since climate wasn’t included in traditional histories of the world
Many things converged or crashed together at once since historians have started trying to incorporate climate into the story of world history ; pg. 17
Civilizations in places like what left traces of buildings, artifacts, and written documents
Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China ; pg. 19
What is in Rachel Carson’s novel “Silent Spring”
It demonstrates how commercial pesticides destroyed living organisms and transformed the ecosystem in mere years, whereas natural changes in an ecosystem could only evolve over the course of decades or generations ; pg. 19
What is “Silent Spring” often credited with
Helping humans develop an awareness of how much potential people have to alter the Earth ; pg. 19
