Global Climate Change Evidence and Causes

The definition of climate is the whether conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period. When there is a change after a long period of a time, it is called climate change. The reason why we need to study about these is that it helps us to understand what causes the changes. Also, it allows us to prepare for any natural hazard or extreme changes that can be predicted.
Recently, the world is getting warmer. According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA's Goddard institute for space studies, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8 degrees celsius since 1880.
Co2 is greenhouse gas. It absorbs energy from the sun and releases it back into the atmosphere. If the Co2 level increases, it will absorbs more energy from the sun and releases it back into the atmosphere. This gas cause greenhouse effect and it keeps the earth warmer and eventually temperature will increase. Even thought it is slight change, this slight change of global temperature causes huge differences within nature. One of the causes of Greenhouse effect, which is Co2 level, started to increase from the industrial revolution. It is good achieve improvement, but people need to aware that over use of technology can cause destruction of nature and destroy the balance.

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.