Global Climate Change Activity 2

Part 1:

Question:

Can you explain to your classmate why temperatures from only a single year are not enough to reach a conclusion about changing climate? Use Figure 1.1 to construct your argument, noting when El Niño events occur, but also which years have the highest temperatures. How has the average annual temperature shifted through time? How do the temperatures in the El Niño years compare to the 1950–1970 average? To the 1985–2005 average?

Answer:

Changes in weather do affect climate over long periods of time. On the first graph provided, which maps average temperatures in the U.S. from 1950-1970 along with El Nino years, El Nino events are collectively lower than the El Nino events in the second graph, which has the same information dated from 1985-2005. And in the second graph, the average temperature is noticeably higher and El Nino events occur much more often. This proves that the more frequent the El Nino events happen, and the more extreme they are, the more they can noticeably impact a climate. So that classmate is wrong.

Part 2:

Year	CO2 PPM
1850	285
1900	300
1950	315
2000	350
2100	x>350

1. CO2 levels are increasing at an accelerating rate from decade to decade.

2. a) I would exaggerate the changes by changing the vertical scale.

   b) I would obscure the changes by changing the horizontal scale.

3. Industrial Revolution

4. The graph shows that the rate of CO2 levels is increasing at accelerating speed. It implies that if we don't reduce CO2 emissions, the CO2 levels are likely to be rise exponentially.

Part 3:

Stop	# of Students	Miles to and from school	Total miles driven by all students living near that stop
A	2	0.3	0.6
B	2	1.1	2.2
C	2	2.2	4.4
D	3	2.9	8.7
E	2	3.6	7.4
F	2	2.2	4.4
G	2	2.4	4.8
H	2	3.8	7.6
I	3	2.6	5.2
J	3	1.5	4.5
K	2	0.8	1.6
Average:			5.4

2.

1. 5.4 miles
2. 135 miles
3. 675 miles

3. 30.7 gal

4. 595.2 lb

5. 0.2976 tons

6. 9.2 miles

7. 0.368 miles/student

8. 65.7 mpg/week

9. 1274.9 lb

10. 0.637 tons

11. 2.339 tons

Part 4:

1. The X axis is the years from 0 to 2000 and the Y axis the differences from 1961-1990 average temperature in celsius.
2. The zero on the Y axis is the average temperature from 1961-1990.
3. It is a good baseline because the period of time from 1961-1990 is a time of extreme temperature change so the fluctuation is very evident on the chart
4. Do on the packet
5. The lowest temperature is around year 1600 and the highest temperature is in 2000
6. The coldest temperature in the blue is much colder than the coldest in the red but the warmest blue temperature is fairly similar to the highest red temperature.
7. It slowly Increases as the years continue
8. The impact of a climate just one degree celsius warmer by 2100 will have serious impacts on agriculture and coastal regions around the world. It will raise sea levels, hasten extinctions, and impact food production.

Global Climate Change Activity

      For the part one, we learned that Temperatures from only one year are not enough to determine the climate of the region because climate is the average weather conditions determined by decades of years. Scientist often defines climate change as a significant "long term" change in the weather pattern of a certain area. It is difficult to find any change in the weather pattern by looking at the temperatures from just one year.

     For the part two, we made table and graph of CO2 level. I was able to observe that CO2 level was increasing at accelerating rate from decade to decade. Also, I learned that even small changes of CO2 level can affect to environment a lot.

     For the part three, we used map to calculate the distance from the school of each stop and find out the difference if every student drive to the school instead of taking school bus. Obviously it will increase the CO2 level because there are more vehicles. 

     In part four, authors shows again that even small changes in environment can cause huge differences. We learned in this part that temperature can raise sea level up. This one degree of sea level, seems small to us, can affect a lot on agriculture and extinction.

Nuclear Wastes / Accidents Brief

     Nuclear waste is the material that nuclear fuel becomes after it is used in a reactor. It looks exactly like the fuel that was loaded into the reactor, assemblies of metal rods enclosing stacked-up ceramic pellets. But since nuclear reactions have occurred, the contents aren’t quite the same. Before producing power, the fuel was mostly Uranium, oxygen, and steel. Afterwards, many Uranium atoms have split into various isotopes of almost all of the transition metals on your periodic table of the elements. The waste, sometimes called spent fuel, is dangerously radioactive, and remains so for thousands of years. When it first comes out of the reactor, it is so toxic that if you stood within a few meters of it while it was unshielded, you would receive a lethal radioactive dose within a few seconds and would die of acute radiation sickness within a few days. The spent fuel is never unshielded. It is kept underwater (water is an excellent shield) for a few years until the radiation decays to levels that can be shielded by concrete in large storage casks. The final disposal of this spent fuel is a hot topic, and is often an argument against the use of nuclear reactors. Options are deep geologic storage and recycling.

     Nuclear power is really powerful. Nuclear energy generated 797 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2014. Because it is efficient source, human cannot stop using nuclear power even though the side effect of nuclear power is dangerous and risky. Each nuclear energy facility generates about $470 million annually in sales of goods and services in the local community.

     The first nuclear accident that I was able to find is in Chalk River, Canada in 1952. It’s INES level is 5, which is same as Fukushima accident. The nuclear energy industry began making immediate safety improvements as part of a self-assessment of U.S. nuclear facilities within days of the 2011 accident at Fukushima Daiichi. But accident at Chernobyl still has the highest INES level. Once nuclear accident happen, it is hard to recover. Nobody can take control of nuclear accident, so human need to prevent and be careful with nuclear energy.

Environmental Awareness Activity

    Lab Report

      We started our lab in front of the Abbe center. When we started our lab, it was sunny and there was a little wind. To measure the speed and direction of the wind, we observed the branches and leaves. We also dropped the leave and saw the way that leave fall. The speed of wind was 1-4 mph and the direction was 130 degree to southeast.  We didn't really saw clouds on first day, but we saw few clouds on the second day. We measured the slope of the road from dining hall to gym and it was about 118 degrees toward southeast. It seemed to be no problem for the land users. After we measure the slope in front of the crib, we went back side of the crib. We also measured the slope there and we got 155 degrees toward G-building. The wind's speed and direction was same. After we measured the wind and slope there, we went to the parking lot. We found the Buick Century 1995, which is the oldest car in the parking lot. The largest care was GMC Savanna 3500, which is School van. It was obvious that GMC Savanna 3500 pollutes more than Buick Century 1995 because it was way larger. After we are done with lab, we calculated how much rain it will gonna fell over 1 acre of land and it was about 16292.6 gallons. I estimated that about 10 percent of Solebury school is impervious to water. There are a lot of waterway around the campus toward the way to gym. I think the wastes from animals and nature are the factor that affects the water most around the Solebury School.

     Research 

     Sun rose at 6:54 am and set at 6:46 pm today. The longest day of the year is June 21, which is the summer solstice. The shortest day of the year is Dec 21, which is winter solstice. During equinoxes, day time and night time will be same. Our growing season is from April to November. Around this area, about 40 inches of rain fell in the last year. The animal that is in danger right now in Pennsylvania is least shrew, one of the smallest mammals, which looks like mixture of mole and rat. The longest river that flows through Pennsylvania is Ohio river and it's 1579 km long. I'm not sure where the all the trashes from Solebury school's dorm is going, however, trashes from my home in Korea goes to Seoul Garbage management center. The tallest mountain east of the Mississippi River is Mt.Mitchell. The tallest mountain west of the Mississippi river is Mt.Whitney.