Chapter 18-Global Climate Change
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Created by:
eugenemoon92 on May 5, 2011
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Chapter 18 Defintions
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14 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Adaption | is the evolutionary process whereby a population becomes better suited to its habitat. |
| Aerosols | is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas. Examples are smoke, oceanic haze, air pollution, smog and CS gas. |
| El Nino- Southern Oscillation (ENSO) | The exceptionally strong warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean that occurs every 2 to 7 years and depresses local fish and bird populations by alteirng the marine food web in the area. Originally, the name that Spanish-speaking fishermen gave to an unusually warm surface current that sometimes arrived near the Pacific coast of South America around Christmas time. |
| global climate change | Any change in aspects of Earth's climate, such as temperature, precipitation, and storm intensity. generally refers today to the current warming trend in global temperatures and associated climatic changes. |
| greenhouse effect | The warming of Earth's surface and atmosphere caused by the energy emitted by green house gases |
| greenhouse gases | a gas that absorbs infrared radiation released by Earth's surface and then warms the surface and troposphere by emitting energy, thus giving rise to the greenhouse effect. green house gases include carbon dioxide, water vapor, ozone, nitrous oxide, halocarbon gases, and methane. |
| Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | an international panel of atmospheric scientists, climate experts, and government officials established in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Prgramme and the World Meteorological Organization, whse mission is to assess information relevant to questions of human-induced global climate change. |
| Kyoto Protocol | An agreement drafted in 1997 that calls for reducing, by 2012, emissions of six greenhouse gases to levels lower than their levels in 1990. although the United States has refused to ratify the protocol, it came into force in 2005 when Russia ratified it, the 127th nation to do so. |
| La Nina | An exceptionally strong cooling of surface water in the equatorial pacific ocean that occurs every 2 to 7 hears and has widespread climatic consequences. |
| Milankovitch cycles | one of three types of variations in earth's rotation and orbit around the sun that result in slight changes in the relative amount f solar radiation reaching earth's surface at different latitudes. as the cycles proceed, they change the way solar radiation is distributed over earth's surface and contribute to changes in atmospheric heating and circulation that have triggered the ice ages and other climate changes |
| mitigation | is action to decrease the intensity of radiative forcing in order to reduce the potential effects of global warming |
| proxy indicators | indirect evidence, such as pollen from sediment cores and air bubbles from ice cores, of the climate of the past |
| thermohaline circulation | refers to the part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes. |
| United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change | international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000, signed by nations represented at the 1992 earth summit convened in rio de janeiro by the united nations. the FCCC called for a voluntary, nation-by-nation approcah, but by the late 1990s it had become apparent that it would not succeed. its imminent failure sparked introduction of the kyoto protocol. |
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