Chapter 15

5) Climate is a description of ________ weather conditions

A) Long-term regional

Kyoto Protocol

An international agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions

11) The Keeling graph of Carbon Dioxide concentrations form a pattern that goes up and down each year. What is the cause of this oscillating pattern?

A) During the northern hemisphere summer, there are so many trees, that they reduce the amount of CO2 substantially, but when northern winter occurs, there are not enough trees in the southern hemisphere to use all of the inputs of CO2 in the atmosphere.

6) The "ozone hole" that causes concern among scientists and the public is an ozone depletion in the

A) Stratosphere

9) Milankovitch cycles involve the periodic ________ and could be responsible for ________ weather changes.

A) Wobbling of the earth's axis and orbital shifts; cyclic

13) Models of climate change are most in agreement with observed data ________.

A) when both natural and anthropogenic causes of warming are included.

15) The main activity of the IPCC is to ________.

B) make general assessments of all climate change research at regular intervals of time.

10) When El Niño occurs, a mass of warm Pacific surface water that is usually pushed westward by winds,

B) surges eastward toward South America.

2) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is

C) a United Nations working group of 2500 scientists around the world.

1) The layer of atmosphere immediately above the earth where weather events occur is called the

C) troposphere

7) Albedo is a term describing the Earth's

D) Reflection of solar radiation

12) The Keeling graph, although it has yearly oscillations, shows that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere ________.

D) is steadily rising.

14) Current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is ________ according to the Keeling graph

D) over 400ppm

4) The idea of breaking down the solution to the larger problem of climate change into smaller more manageable pieces or goals is known as

D) wedge analysis.

Coriolis effect

The influence of friction and drag on air layers near the earth; deflects air currents to the direction of the earth's rotation.

greenhouse gases

gases in the atmosphere that retain heat. ex. carbon dioxide,water vapor, methane, nitrous oxides

Zones of the atmosphere

lowest to highest 1. Troposphere 2. Stratosphere 3. Mesosphere 4. Thermosphere

Milankovitch cycles

periodic variations in tilt, eccentricity, and wobble in the earth's orbit; Milutin Milankovitch suggested that it is responsible for cyclic weather changes

8) The Coriolis effect is caused by the

B) Rotation of the Earth

3) Carbon dioxide is a major factor in the global warming story since it

B) absorbs more infrared radiation than it emits