6.2 Climate change — causes and impactsIB Environmental Systems and Societies HL: Flashcards
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What is climate?
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- What is climate?
- The typical conditions resulting from physical processes in the atmosphere, averaged over a long period.
- Since when has the rate of CO2 emission accelerated particularly?
- Since about 1950.
- What is the enhanced greenhouse effect?
- Extra warming from additional GHGs added by humans.
- What is coral bleaching?
- Corals expel their symbiotic algae under heat stress, losing food and colour.
- How do repeated bleaching events affect resilience?
- They leave too little time to recover, reducing the reef's resilience.
- What does the planetary boundary for climate show?
- Evidence suggests it has been passed: CO2 is above 350 ppm (now over 420 ppm).
- (HL) Give two proxy measurements.
- Isotope ratios in ice cores, tree rings (dendrochronology) or pollen in peat cores.
- (HL) Give two direct measurements.
- Weather station temperature records, observatory CO2 measurements, satellite or radar data.
- (HL) What is a climate model?
- A set of equations representing climate processes, used to predict outputs from inputs.
- (HL) What is hindcasting?
- Testing a model by running it with past conditions and comparing its output with recorded climate.
- (HL) Why do models use scenarios?
- To explore different possible futures of emissions and socio-economic change.
- (HL) What is a tipping point?
- A threshold beyond which a system moves to a new equilibrium, often irreversibly.
- (HL) What is a tipping cascade?
- Passing one tipping point pushes other systems closer to their thresholds.
- (HL) What does 'least responsible, most vulnerable' mean?
- Countries that emit little (e.g. Pakistan) often suffer the worst impacts, raising equity issues.
Written by the Exaim team, led by Shaun Daswani (Head of Upper Secondary, Improve ME Institute; MSc Financial Mathematics, Imperial College London; BSc, UCL) and Jason Daswani (operational lead, Improve ME Institute; LSE).