Ice ages - correct answer ✔Cycle through periods of 100,000 years. Last ice
age reached its coldest point about 20,000 years ago, and ended 10,000
years ago
Holocene - correct answer ✔Last 11,000 years (since the last ice age). Peak
temperatures around 7,000 years ago, then declined until
Rate of climate change - correct answer ✔1 degree C in the last century, 16x
faster than the average rate of warming coming out of the last ice age
(.06C/century)
Energy balance - correct answer ✔For a given amount of energy from the
sun, there's an equal amount radiated back into space, and this determines
the temperature of the climate system. Greenhouse gases absorb infrared
heat that is radiated out into space.
Greenhouse effect - correct answer ✔Discvoered by Svante Arrhenius, and
with more supporting evidence by Guy Callendar. An increase in greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere warms a planet, because it absorbs the infrared heat
attempting to radiate out into space
, Radiative forcing - correct answer ✔When the amount of energy that enters
the Earth's atmosphere is different from the amount of energy that leaves it.
Today, this is causing the atmosphere to warm, and will force changes in the
Earth's atmosphere.
Evidence for Anthropogenic climate change - correct answer ✔Increase in
CO2 matches human behavior (slightly less than 1/2 of what humans emit
remains in the atmosphere that year); isotopic analysis of CO2 shows that
CO2 is mostly coming from fossil fuels; ice cores show pre-industrial
revolution levels at 280ppm (now 415ppm)
CO2 - correct answer ✔Atmospheric Lifetime: 500 years
GWP: 1
Increase in Abundance Since pre-industrial: 130 ppm
Fraction of Total Greenhouse Radiative Forcing: 56%
Source: Fossil Fuel combustion
Methane - correct answer ✔Atmospheric Lifetime: 12.4 years
GWP: 28
Increase in Abundance: 1.1ppm
Fraction of Total Greenhouse Radiative Forcing: 15%
Nitrous Oxide - correct answer ✔Atmospheric Lifetime: 121 years
GWP: 265
Increase in Abundance : 75 ppb
Fraction of Total Greenhouse Radiative Forcing: 5%
Halocarbons - correct answer ✔Atmospheric Lifetime: Years to millennia
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