Social Science Flashcards
Earth System Science (ESS)
A scientific approach that views the Earth as a whole system with subsystems. It looks at the interactions between subsystems, which include the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere.
Anthropocene
The idea that current conditions have been heavily influenced by human actions.
Forcings
External forces that can alter the balance of subsystems. Forcings can cause positive or negative feedbacks.
Geosphere
Encompasses all the land, earth, and rock. Scholars also use the term Lithosphere.
Hydrosphere
All the water on Earth, in the ground, and in the atmosphere. It also includes ice, which can count as its own subsystem call the cryosphere.
Atmosphere
Consists of various gases: the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere (from lowest to highest).
Biosphere
all living things on, in, and around the Earth.
Forcings
Solar energy, volcanoes, and greenhouse gases.
Solar Energy
Is not consistent: in the late 1600s and early 1700s there was cooler temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere with fewer sunspots and low solar acivity.
The Milankovitch cycles
Reflect that at intervals of around 100,000 years, 41,000 years, and 26,000 years, the Earth completes different cycles that influence which parts of the Earth receive more, or less, solar energy. They steer the Earth through periodic ice ages
Volcanoes
Large volcanoes emit a layer of dust and particles that can offer shade to cover large areas of the globe. These effects can be great with large volcanoes together covering large regions of the world, even bringing down the average global temperature
Greenhouse Gases
water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane
Positive feedback
When the forcing and the feedback both head towards the same direction.
i.e. melting of the ice sheets in the North ole. Forcing: warming causes the feedback: ice melting. This further warms the climate (cycle). Positive feedbacks can push to a tipping point, which is a point of no return
Negative feedback
more moderate, where the forcing and the feedback head in opposite directions. Winter season in the great lakes in North America. warm conditions raise the water temperature which condenses into clouds that cool the land that they cover. Warmer air moves upward and the cold air in the polar cortex movves out of its usual course and travels south into the US where it doesn’t usually reach, leading to cooler areas.
archive
a physical repository of documents. places that hold these written documents and sources are called “archives of society”. climate scholars search nature for clues about history, which is called “archives of nature”
Proxy
a natural feature that shows evidence of being impacted by specific climate conditions. These include ice, trees, and soil.
Ice Cores
Ice Core sampling is where they drill large cylinders of ice out of deep glaciers. They are analyzed in layers. As the ice was formed, particles from the atmosphere freeze into the ice. An ice core from an old glacier can reveal what the atmospheric conditions were dating as far back as hundreds of thousands of years.
Trees
The rings of a tree can offer a lot of information as to whether the year was dry or rainy and can show the weather conditions of individual seasons. This is called dendrochronology
Sedimentation and Other Sources
Layers of sediment or mud on the bottom of lakes and the ocean contain information about composition and content of water. Coral sampling can also reveal data.
The Archives of Society
information from sources produced by humans. Are often accurate in their dating
Instrumental Records
Always think about when, where, and how measurements should be taken. Scholars record the temperature at different layers of the atmosphere even.
Narrative Records
Things like diaries, ship logbooks, and more. Not often exactly accurate
Other Records
marker of a highwater mark during a flood on a building, paintings, even grain prices can indicate the weather season. However, there are also a lot of other factors that can influence these records, so it is necessary to be careful
Historical Climatology and Paleoclimatology
Investiages climates of the past, before the 1800s by collecting samples from nature and more. They use archives of nature mainly.
Climate History
Collect and study sources from the archives of society
The History of Climate and Society (HCS)
Focuses on the relationship between climate and society. It scrutinizes causal claims and makes claims about climate causing certain social conditions. It also emphasizes geographical and chronological scale/scope.
