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Maldives

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Increase in global sea levels = will sumerge the Maldives, an island chain that is only 2.4 m above sea level. Had a giant tsunami, which provided indication of what future w/ climate change would be like.

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Forth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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Made clearto the world the scientific consensus that climate is changing, that we are the cause, and that climate change is already exerting impacts that will be increasingly severe if we don't do anything abt it.

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Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth

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Book that proved that climate change is happening. Very popular, convinced thousands that it was happening.

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Climate

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An area's long term atmospheric conditions, including temp, moisture content, wind, precipitation, barometric pressure, solar radiation, etc. Climate differs from weather as it is conditions over seasons, years, or millennia.

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Global Climate Change

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Trends and variation in earth's Climate, involving aspects like temperature, precipitation, storm frequency and intensity.

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Global Warming

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Differs from the climate change, refers specifically to ncrase in global temp. The climage changes unfolding rapidly, and scientists agree that human activities are largely responsible.

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Influences on global climate

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The most influential thing is the sun, second is the atmsosphere, thir is the oceans which shape climate by storing and transporting heat and moisture.

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Greenhouse gases

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CO2, Methane, Ozone, Water vapor, nitrous oxide, halocarbons, a diverse group including chlorofluorocarons After subsequently remit infrared energy of different wavelengths. Some of it is lost to space, some travels back downward, warming the atmosphere and the planet's surface in the greenhouse effect.

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Global Warming potential, of different olecules

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Relatively ability of one molecule of a given greenhouse gas to contribute to warming. CO2, methane, Nitrous oxide, HFC-23 is 12,000 times as potent as CO2, Methane is 23, Nitrous oxide 296.

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Why CO2 is the one we're most concerned about

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Far more abundant than methane or nitrous oxide. CO2 is highest in the last 20 million years. Humans have burnt down forests which serve as sinks for carbon, and we burned fossil fuels in our homes, factories, and automobiles, transferring lots o/ co2 up there.

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Other human activities besides industry/ transportation causing global warming

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Tapping into fossil fuel deposits, raising livestock that emit methane, disposing o/ org matter in landfills, growing rice. Increase N02, a by product of feedlots, chemical plants, auto emissions, synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.

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Water Vapor, why it isn't a problem

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Most abundant greenhouse gas, concentration hasn't changed, but as the temp increases, Earth's water bodies could transfer more water vapor into the atmosphere, amplifying greenhouse gas.

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Effective of water vapor on cloudiness

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Could increase it, which could slow global warming by reflecting solar radiation into space Depending on whether low or high elevation clouds resulted, either shade and cool Earth or contribute to warming and accelerate evaporation and further cloud formation.

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Aerosols

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Microscopic doplets and particles that either warm or cool. Generally cause warming by absorbing solar energy but cool by reflecting sun rays., could slow global warming nthe short term. When sulfur dioxide gets to atmosphere, undergoes rxxns that cause acid precipitation, along with volcanic eruptions they contribute to making sulfur rich haze in upper atmosphere reducing amt of sunlight to Earth's surface.

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Radiative forcing

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Amount of change in energy that a given factor causes. Positive forcing warms surface, negative forcing cools it.

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Milankovitch cycles

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Periodic changes in earth's rotation and orbit, alter the way solar radiation distrubted over Earth's surface, by modifying patterns of atmospheric heating, cycles cause long term climate variation.

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Solar output, effect on the climate

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Varies in amt of radiation emitted over short and long time scales. At each peak of its 11 year sunspot cycle the sun may emit solar flares, bursts of energy strong enough to disrupt satellite comms. Scientists are concluding that variation = not been great enough to drive lots o/ temp change.

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Ocean Absorption, affect on climate change

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Holds 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere, absorb from the atmosphere, but absorb it more slowly than we add it. It slows global warming but doesn't prevent it, and absorption now decreasing.

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El Niño Souther Oscillation

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Systematic shift in atmospheric pressure, sea surface temp, ocean circulation in tropicl pacific ocean. Under normal conditions, prevailing winds blow from east to west along equator from high to low pressure, making a large scale convective loop. Winds push surface waters westward, making water pile up in western Pacific, so water near Indonesia 50 cm high and 8 degrees C warmer than water near SA.

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When are el nino conditions triggered

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Triggered when air pressure increases in western Pacific, decreases in eastern pacific, makes equatorial winds weaken. W/o winds, warm water collected in western pacific flows eastward, suppressing upwellings along Pacific coast of South, Central, North America. Make rainstorms and floods in areas that are generally dry, and cause drought in moist areas.

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La Nina events, when

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Cold surface waters extend far west in Pacific, weather patterns affected in opposite ways. Enso cycles are periodic but irregular, occur every 2-8 years. Globally warming air and sea temps may be increasing frequency and strength of these cycles.

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Thermohaline Circulation

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Worldwide current system where warmer, fresher water moves along surface and colder, saltier water moves deep beneath surface. Warm surface water flows north from equator in Gulf Stream, carries heat to high latitutdes, keeps Europe warmer.

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Effect of interrupting the thermohaline circulation

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Could trigger rapid climate change. If global warming causes much of Greenland's ice sheet to melt, fresh water runoff into the North Atlantic would dilute surface waters, making them less dense. Could stop the NADW formation, shut down northward flow of warm equatorial water, making Europe cool rapidly.

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Proxy Idnicators

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Type of indirect evidence that serve as proxies, or susbtitutes, for direct measurement and shed light on past climate.

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Role of ice caps, ice sheets, and glociers to climate history

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Have preserved within them tiny bubbles of the ancient atmosphere. Scientists can examine them by drilling in, extracting long columns or cores, from them, scientists can determine atmospheric composition, greenhouse gas, concentrations, temp trends, snowfall, solar activity, and frequency of forest fires.

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Drilling cores into beds of sediment

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They preserve pollen grains and other remnants from plants, analyzing them can illuminate history of past vegetation. Knowing what plants occurred in a location at a given time can tell us about its climate at that place and time.

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Tree rings, indicator

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Width of the ring reveals ho wmuch the tree grew, wide ring = more growth, genereally indicating a wetter year. Long lived trees can provide records of precipitation and drought going back hundreds or thousands of years, study fire history as well..

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Packrat Rodents

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Carry seeds and plant parts to their middens or dens in caves and rock crevices sheltered from rain. They may preserve for centries, allowing researches to study past flora fof region.

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Coral reefs, how they help us

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Take in trace elements and isotope ratios, incorporate chemical clues into growth bands in structure of reefs they build.

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Coupled general circulation models

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Programs that combine what is known about atmospheric circulation, ocean circulation, atmosphere ocean interactions, and feedback mechanisms to simulate climate processes. Couple or combine climate influences of atmosphere and oceans in 1 simulation, need manipulatin vast amounts of data.

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How reliable models are

answer

Support the notion that natural and human factors contribute to climate dynamics, and indicate global climate models = reliable, and improve in resolution, predict climate change region by region for various areas of world.

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IPCC Fourth Assessment Report

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Represents consensus of scientific climate research from around the world, summarizs thousands fo scientific studies, documents observed trends in surface temperature, precipitation patterns, snow and ice cover, sea levels, stomr intensity, other factors,predicts future changes in phenomena after considering potential scenarios for ture greenhouse emissions, address impacts of current and future climate change on wildlife, ecosystems, and human societies, discusses ossible strategies to pursue in response to climate change. Estimate regarding impacts of climate change on human societies are conservative.

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IPCC, how much temp will increase

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Temp changes greatest in Arctic, with ice sheets melting, sea ice thinning, storms increasing, harder for Inuit and polar bears to hunt seals, Permafrost thawing the Arctic, destabilizing buildings. Average surface temp rise 0.2 degrees C per decade for next 20 years. By end of 21st C, global temps will be 1.8 to 4.0 degrees C higher than today's. Sea surface temps will also increase as oceans absorb heat. Warmer seas may be increasing power of storms.

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Precipitation Change predicitions

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In dry and humid regions, heavy rain events will increase while in African Sahel and the SW US, droughts will be more frequent and severe, harming agricutlrue. It will increase at high lattitudes, decrease at low and middle atitudes, heavy precipitation events more frequent increasing risk of flooding.

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Effects of Melting ice and snow

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many glaciers on tropical mountaintops have already disappeared, majorglacies loose a lot of thickness. Accumulate snow n the winter, release meltwater in summer, though warming temps will continue to melt mountain glaciers, posing risk of sudden floods and reducing summertime water supplies.

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Effect of warming temps on snow cover in high lat and ice sheets of Arctic

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Reduce it, melt the ice sheets of Arctic. Snow cover, permafrost, ice sheets decrease, sea ice will shrink.

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Why warming is accelerating in the Arctic

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As snow and ice melt, darker, less reflective surfaces exposed, so Earth's capacity to reflect light decreases, meaning more of sun's rays absorbed, fewer reflected, and surface warms.

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Effect of High Sea Levels

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Beach erosion, coastal flooding, intrusion of saltwater into aquifers, storm surges. Will force hundreds of millions to move upland or invest in costly protections against high tides and storm surges. Pacific islands will be evacuated, contamination of groundwater and soil by sea water.

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Effect of warmer waters on corals and the ocean chemistry

answer

Enhanced CO2 concentrations change ocean chemistry. As ocean water absorbs CO2, it will be more acidic, impairing growth of coral and other organisms whose exoskeletons are made of calcium carbonate.

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Climate change, affects on organisms and ecosystems

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Chagnes in seasonal timing, with plants leafing out earlier, birds migrating earlier, etc. B/c of changes, mismatches will occur. Spatial shifts in ranges of roganisms, with plants and animals moving toward poles or up in elevation as temps warm. Some organisms can't cope, 20 -30 percent of plant and anial species could go extinct, trees can't shift distributions fast enough, animals mya go uphill until nowhere left to go.

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Affect on structure and function of communities and ecosystems, climate change

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Regions w/ precipitation and strea flow increase, erosion and flooding willpollute and later aquatic systems. Where precipitation decreases, lakes, poonds, wetlands, streams will diminish. Acidification of the oceans, coral reefs decline affecting biodiversity. Climate change decreases plant growth, incrsasing carbon flux.

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Climate change, affect on agriculture

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Willl increase somewhat but beyond 3 degrees C they will decline. Seasonally dry tropical and subtropical region, growing season shortened, harvests susceptible to drought and crop failure.

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Climate change, affect on forestry

answer

battle insect, disease outbreaks, invasive species, big fires, promoted by longer,warmer, drier fire seasons. Enriched CO2 will spur greater growth in near term, but will vary from region to region. Climatic effects like drought may destroy gains.

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Climate change affects on health

answer

Heat waves, and heat stress can kill ppl. Respiratory ailments from air plllution, expansion of tropical diseases, drowning from storms, hunger related ailments as demand on agricultural sys increase, disease and sanitation problems whne flood overcome sewage treatment sys.

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Economics, effect from climate change

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Widen gap btw rich and poor, poor ppl rely more on resources that are sensitive to climate conditions. Climate change will cost 1-5 percent GDP globally, climate change could cost us 5 -20 percent of GDP by 2200

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US Global Change Research Program

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Coordinates federal climate research, issued a comprehensive report highlighting the past and future effects of global climate change on the US. Climate models predict forest communities should in general shift north and upward in elevation. Some forest types will decline, though some may expand east, yields of 13 crops would increase and only 1 potatoes would decrese. USGCRP report = similar to IPCC assessment, but it got suppressed.

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Greenhosue skeptics

answer

Scientists backed by funding from Exxon Mobil and other corporations in fossil fuel and auto industries. Want to cast doubt n scientific consensus, and their views amplified by the US media.

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Industrial response to Climate Change

answer

Many of them ask gov't leaders to enact strong national legislation to require signfiicnant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Joined ranks with the insurance industry, which years earlier were concerned about ti w/ increased payouts.

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Mitigation

answer

Alleviate problem. Reduce emissions by improving nrg efficiency, clean and renewable energy sources, farm practices that protect soil quality, no deforestation.

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Adaptation

answer

Adapt to change by finding ways to cushion onself from its blows. Restric coastal development, adjust farming practices to cope with drought, modify water management practices to deal w/ river flows, glacial outburst floods, or salt contamination of groundwater.

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Largest source of US greenhouse gases

answer

Electricity generation. Reducing volume of fossil fuels burnt would lower greenhouse gas emissions, as would decreasing electricity consumption. To reduce fuels used, encourage conservation and efficiency, switch to cleaner and renewable energy sources.

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Conservation and efficiency

answer

Use new techs, like hgh efficiency lightbulbs and appliances, reduce your own electricity consumption. Replace standard lightbulbs with compcact fluorescent lights to lower energy use for lighting by 40 percent. Opt for lifestyle choices.

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Altering sources of electricity

answer

Alter types of nrg used, use natural gas instead of coal. Carbon capture and carbon sequestration or storage. Use hydro power, geothermal nrg, photovoltaic cells, wind power, ocean energy sources.

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Carbon capture

answer

Tech or approaches that remove CO2 power plant emissions, it would let plants to continue using fossil fuels while cutting the pollution, carbon then sequestered or stored.

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Inefficency of average automobile

answer

Very inefficient, as 85 percent of fuel sent in is wasted.

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Automotive tech to mak them more fuel efficient

answer

Tech exists to make them more fuelefficient, Raising it for US vehciles will require government mandate and/or consumer demand, and as gas prices rise, demand for more fuel efficient autombiles will increase. Advancing tech - alternatives to traditional comubustion engine automobile, fully electric vehcles, alternative fuels.

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Driving less, public transportation to reduce carbon emission

answer

Live nearer workplaces, mass transit, reduce usage of gas, make cities more friendly to biking.

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Sustainable land management, reduce emissions

answer

protect integrity of soil on cropland and rangeland to enable soil to store more carbon, make techniques to reduce meission of methane from rice cultivation, reduce nitrous oxide emissions, grow biofuels, restore forests, cut greenhouse gas emmissions by recovering emthane, treating wastewater, generating energy from waste in incinerators.

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The Stabilization Triangle

answer

Cut it into 7 equal wedges, to eliminate 1 wedgereduce emssions equal to 1 billion tons of carbon per year. It won't be enough in long term, and to stop it need to reduce emissions by developing new tech, changing lifestyles reverse pop growth.

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UN framework convention on climate change

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Outlined a plan for reducing greenhouse gases. It was a plan for reducing emssions through a oluntary nation by nation approach, though it was clear that this approach won't succeed.

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Kyoto Protocol

answer

Mandates signatory nations to reduce emissions of 6 greenhosue gases to levels below those of 1990. US refused to ratify it, as it requires industrialized nations to reduce emissions but no thte same of rapidly industrializing nations like China and India.

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Results of Kyoto Protocol, how it is viewed

answer

Nations that signed it had decreased emissions 3.3 percent but much of it b/c o/ economic contraction in Russia and breakup of USSR. Even if every nation complied, greenhouse gas emissions would keep rising.

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US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement

answer

Mayors from over 600 cities signed it, and mayors will meet or beat Kyoto Protocol guidleines and urge states and fed gov't to take action.

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Cali, fight against Global Warming

answer

Passed Global Warming Solutions Act, which aims to cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020. Penalties for noncompliance, and followed earlier efforts in Cali to mandate higher fuel efficiency for automobiles.

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Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

answer

Taken up by 10 NE states, cap and trade program for carbon emissions.

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Planned approach for Regional greenhouse gas initiative

answer

each state decides what polluting sources needed to participate, each state sets a co2 cap, distributes to each emssions source one permit for each ton they emit up to amt o/ cap, sources w/ too few permits to cover emissions must find ways to reduce emissions, buy permits from other soruces, or pay for credits through carbon offset project, sources with excess permits an keep or sell, any source meitting more than permitted amt will face penalties. Should be self sustaining system. Price of permit fluctuates freely in market.

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Chicago Climate Exchange

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First emssions trading program for greenhouse gas reduction, boasts over 120 corps, institutions, municipalities in NA and Brazil, the system imposes a 6 percent reduction on overall emissions.

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European Union Emission Trading Scheme

answer

All EU nations participate, each submits for approval a national allocation plan that conforms ott he nation's obligations under Kyoto Protocol, got off to a successful start, carbon prices hit 30 euros per ton by early 2006. Whennat gov'ts allocated too many emissions permits to industries, price of carbon fell, so permits lost value Need to correct allocations, revive their market in 2008.

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Carbon offset

answer

Voluntary payment to another entity to enable that entity to reduce greenhouse emissions one is unable or unwilling to reduce oneself, offsets one's own emissions. Fast becoming popular, as many businesses, unviersities, goverments, and individuals want to achieve carbon neutrality, a state w/o no net carbon. Reduce one's emissions w/o investing in efforts to change habits.

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Reality of carbon offsets

answer

Often fall short, without rigorous oversight to make sure offset money does what it is intendd for, it risks being no more than a way for wealthy consumers to assuage a guity conscience, need enforceable offset infrastructure.

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