Climate System and Climate Change
34 important questions on Climate System and Climate Change
When is an ice age initiated?
When is an greenhouse interval initiated?
How is heat transported?
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What are the two natural processes?
- The orbit is not perfectly round, the axis varies and the orientation to the sun
- Volcalic activity: ejects large amounts of particles into the atmosphere, causing cooling
What is the result of human pollution?
- Changes that affect the reradiation of the energy from the sun warms the atmosphere
What are orbit changes?
- Changing the sun's warming effects
Why are the NH landmasses important?
- A similar dynamic for the SH does not exist -> there is little landmass to hold ice at high latitudes
What happens if you reduce the atmospheric CO2?
What happens with the ocean circulation?
- Warm water rises, cool water sinks
- Salt water is more dense than fresh water, leading to salty water to sink and less salty water to rise
What happens with heat transport?
- When it moves from the tropics towards the poles, they cool, descent and eventually return to the tropics in a giant loop
- This creates large, systematic patterns of circulation in the atmosphere
What are hadley cells?
Where do Hadley celles meet?
- the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ)
- This migrates north and south, resulting in two rainfall peaks in most part of the tropics
What are trade winds?
What happens when the trade winds converge along the equator?
What is the Ekman spiral?
What happens with the Ekman spiral?
- This moving water has to be replaced, so water from depth is drawn to the surface
- The movement of this cold nutrient rich water from depth to the surface is reffered as upwelling
What is the thermohaline circulation?
- Warm water at the equator evaporates, leaving water behind that is both warmer, saltier and denser
- This salty warm water moves towards the poles, where it cools and sinks -> renewing the circulation
What happens during El Nino events?
- Upwelling is reduced along Western South America
- Enhanced rainfall in Pacific
- Decreased rainfall and drought in Africa
What is done at Mauna Loa?
- Escape local variation in CO2 by urban emission and vegetation
- Thus, the record is pure
What contributes 1/4 of total emissions of CO2?
- clearing of forests
- other land use
Where does the earth lose heat?
Is water a greenhouse gas?
Where does CO2 dominate?
- Here the Earth loses heat to space
What is water vapor?
- But, water vapor concentrations are affected indirectly by temperature
What do we expect with climate change?
- Oceans warmed less than land -> so most terrestrial regions have warmed in excess of the global mean
- Some regions have cooled, some have warmed
What happens with the thermohaline circulation?
- Polar ice melts -> fresh water pulses in North Atlantic can reduce contact of the Gulf Stream with ice -> reduce its salinity -> warmer, less saline water -> less likely to sink
What happens when the freshwater pulse is strong enough?
What is the Gulf Stream and what would happen without it?
- Without it, Europe would be cooler
What happend with "Younger Dryas"?
- It was a long lasting climate flicker spanning about 1000 particulary in Europe
- It resulted from a shutdown of the Gulf stream portion of thermohaline circulation
What is mean with the Seesaw effect?
- Alterations in Northern sea ice extent are often an initiating event in these teleconnections -> Effecs may be seen first in NH and then later or reversed in SH
How arise sudden releases of greenhouse gasses?
- emissions from volcanic eruptions
-> they affect the balance that determines concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere (have massive effects on the global carbon cycle)
What is the veloctiy of climate change in flat areas/mountains?
Mountains: low velocity of climate change
What are GCM-general circulation models?
- They divide the atmosphere and ocean into a series of 3D cells
What are RCM-regional climate models?
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