GEC 1

what are some uses of solar energy

.08% photosynthesis drives wind and ocean circulation absorbed by atmosphere and earth materials as heat some reflected straight into space

4 main difficulties in global environmental change research

1. nature of human env. interaction is not always consistent through time and space 2. connections and interrelationships between things on Earth are highly complex 3. change can be difficult to measure and hard to interpret 4. reliability of data is questionable

stratosphere

2nd layer of atmosphere; extends from 10 to 30 miles up; location of ozone layer; absorbs 95% of Ultraviolet radiation; temperature increases with altitude increase.

equilibrium surface temperature

60F

troposphere

7-9 miles above Earth's surface, site of weather, organisms, contains most atmospheric water vapor, 95% of earth's mass, turbulence. (temperature decreases with increasing altitude, pressure decreases)

Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)

Gases in Earth's atmosphere that trap heat near the surface. Natural process but humans accelerate creating global systemic change!

greenhouse effect

Natural situation in which heat is retained in Earth's atmosphere by carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and other gases

direct impacts

deforestation, factories, emissions, climate

non-proximate sources of env. change

forces of change that underlie proximate forces i.e. what causes them e.g. lack of regulations, consumer demand, increase in pop., greed, quality of tech, society, gov. policy

mitigating forces

forces that directly/indirectly impede, alter, or counteract human driving forces e.g. green roofs, recycling, catalytic converter, regulative policies

5 human dimensions of global environmental change

human driving forces mitigating forces proximate and nonproximate sources of change impacts responses

proximate sources of env. change

immediate human actions that directly alter the physical env. e.g. industrial metabolism and land use/land cover change

examples of global systemic change

increased ghcs, climate change, ozone depletion, ocean acidification

heat is what kind of electromagnetic wave

infrared

4 factors of human driving forces

population change technology change socio-political-economic institutions ideology

2 significant atmospheric functions

regulates heat through natural process known as greenhouse effect regulates solar radiation (uv) from hitting earth

what is global environmental change

set of biological, chemical, and physical, transformations of land, oceans and atmosphere driven by human activities not processes and their interactions

variables that influence what happens to solar energy as it passes through earth system

wavelength of energy nature of gases radiation passes through

globally cumulative change

when local activities are repeated separately around the world, but when added together, they involve so much of earth's surface, they constitute a global scale problem