GARP SCR Question and answers already passed About what percentage of heat trapped by greenhouse gasses goes into heating the oceans?
About 93%
What are the 2 key contributing factors to the rise in sea level?
The melting of ground ice & water expanding as it heats
T/F: The warming ove...
GARP SCR
About what percentage of heat trapped by greenhouse gasses goes into
heating the oceans?
About 93%
What are the 2 key contributing factors to the rise in sea level?
The melting of ground ice & water expanding as it heats
T/F: The warming over the past century is around 16 times faster than the
average rate of warming coming out of the last ice age.
True
How can scientists use tree rings to extract climate information?
Because tree growth follows an annual cycle that is imprinted in the rings in
their trunks, scientists can measure the size of rings & estimate the local
climate around the tree for each year it was alive.
What is the most important rule of the Earth's climate?
Energy Balance—The Energy reaching earth from the sun must be equal to
the energy the earth radiates back to space.
What is meant by greenhouse effect?
,Greenhouse gases are a part of the atmosphere that absorb infrared
radiation. These gases reduce the amount of power the Earth radiates to
space, therefore a planet with more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
must be warmer than one without.
What Swedish scientist first recognized the possibility that as the mass of
greenhouse gases in our atmosphere increases, the atmosphere traps more
heat, leading to higher temperatures?
Svante Arrhenius in 1896. British engineer Guy Callendar provided more
supporting evidence for this possibility in 1938.
What are the 3 simple molecules contained in Earths atmosphere that do not
interact with infrared radiation & therefore generate no greenhouse effect?
Nitrogen (N2), Oxygen (O2) and Argon (Ar)
What is the most important greenhouse gas? (Meaning it traps the most heat)
Water vapor, with carbon dioxide as the next largest contributor.
What is a Keeling Curve?
The Keeling Curve, named after Charles D. Keeling, is a graph which plots the
ongoing change in concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere
since 1957.
,Scientists have observed that, for the last 50 years, the increase in carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere averages 44% of what humans released that year.
What happens to the other 56% of carbon dioxide released by humans?
About half is absorbed into the ocean, leading to ocean acidification & the
other half is absorbed by the land biosphere by enhanced growth.
Methane is an important greenhouse gas. While it's PPM increase in the
atmosphere is much smaller compared to carbon dioxide, it's a significantly
more powerful greenhouse gas on a per-molecule basis.
What is the per molecule ratio measured in kilograms of heat trapped between
methane & carbon monoxide?
1 kg of Methane = 28 kg of carbon dioxide
AD
What is Global Warming Potential (GWP)?
The heat trapping power of GHGs relative to carbon dioxide.
What are the atmospheric lifetime & GWP of Nitrous Oxide?
121 years & 265 GWP
What are the atmospheric lifetime & GWP of halocarbons?
Years to Millenia & 100s to 1000s GWP
, T/F: Aerosols have a net effect to cool the climate.
True! Aerosols can remain suspended in the atmosphere for days or weeks &
can reflect incoming solar radiation back to space, making their net effect to
cool the climate. They can also affect cloud formations, making clouds more
reflective which is an additional cooling mechanism.
What are some examples of how humans generate aerosols?
-Sulfate Aerosols, which occur when fossil fuels containing sulfur impurities
are burned & the sulfur is released into the atmosphere where it it reacts with
other atmospheric constituents to form small liquid droplets.
-Black carbon aerosols such as soot.
-Mineral dust produced by agricultural activities, changes in surface water
features & industrial practices.
T/F: Emissions of water vapor into the atmosphere are largely driven by
human factors.
False.
The main source of water vapor in the atmosphere is evaporation from the
oceans, which is primarily removed from the atmosphere when it falls as rain
or snow. Because the amount of water in the atmosphere is regulated by
evaporation & condensation, it's fundamentally set by the earths temperature.
T/F: Water vapors main role in climate change is to amplify changes caused
by things like increasing carbon dioxide.
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