I-2 Mother Nature's Influence
(Lesson 2)
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By the end of this lesson participants should
be able to:
- discuss the impact on the climate from
changes in the earth’s orbit, volcanic eruptions and El
Niño/La Niña effects
- explain the importance of ice core
samples for determining the history of climate, and
- explain why it is not the Sun and
changes in its output that are responsible for temperature
trends over recent decades
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Click here to take
LESSON 2
(lesson takes about 32 minutes)
1-2 ASSIGNMENT
(worth 10 pts)
--- Write two paragraphs to answer the questions below (one
paragaph for each question)
--- Save your document in any one of the following formats:
PDF,
doc
or
docx
---
Submit your document to the I-2 Dropbox
in
D2L before the deadline
Dropbox Deadline is: Mon Oct
29 @
before midnight (11:59 pm)
QUESTION 1:
The first part of Lesson 2
addresses information about past climate that can be determined
from ice cores. Although we haven’t covered much about ice cores
in class lectures, you read about them back in Chapter 1 in the
SGC E-Text and there was a question about them in the Practice
Self Test for Chapter 1.
In SGC, the CO2
in ice cores is discussed on pp 4-5 and the linkage
between glacial and interglacial cycles and the Vostok ice core
is discussed on pp 15-16. Re-read these two sections in SGC and
study Figure 1-3 (p 5).
Then review items 4 -11 in the Lesson 12 tutorial and
answer the following question about ice cores:
What does a comparison of
the CO2
and temperature evidence found in ice cores and
the CO2
evidence revealed by the Keeling Curve tell us about
natural vs. anthropogenic impacts on climate?
Hint: You can review the Keeling Curve in
Lesson 1, Item 4.
QUESTION 2:
(see "Stella's example" below to give
you an idea of how to answer this tupe of question.)
Describe and explain
something you learned from the tutorial that
YOU think is the
most important insight the lesson
reveals about global climate change.
In your paragraph
. . . .
·
Accurately describe
the global change
processes
involved in this insight.
Add any additional information you may have learned that
relates to the process to show you are making connections.
Stella's example:
From Lesson 2 I learned that when certain volcanoes erupt,
aerosols are produced that are able to reflect incoming solar
radiation and this can lead to short-term global cooling.
Furthermore, according to SGC p 299, the aerosols that can
do this are "sulfate aerosols" that form from SO2 gas when
it is ejected into the lower stratosphere by an explosive
eruption.
·
Include a
quote from Lesson
2 that is related to this insight
Stella's example: "Not all
eruptions affect climate . . . .There
are many others that occur from time to time . . . that do not
affect the climate because they do not eject material into the
stratosphere." (from Item 14)
·
Explain
why you think this is such an important insight
about global change
Stella's example:
I think this
is an important insight about global change because it
illustrates that there are natural
processes that lead to global cooling, but to be effective
climatically, an eruption has to be of a certain type and
explosive enough to eject material into the stratosphere.
Therefore, to explain the reasons for a global change in
climate, multiple aspects of the process must be understood
well enough to know when that process might cause a climate
change and when it might not.
