Midterm 2 study set
If humans burn 5000 GtC in a couple centuries, roughly what will the atmospheric concentration of CO2 be in the year 12017?
750 ppm
What is a GtC?
A billion tons of carbon
What is an AMSU?
Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit
What is plankton?
Any collection of microscopic organisms that drift in the sea.
What is the empirical formula for coal?
C or CH
What is the empirical formula for oil?
CH2
What is the empirical formula for gas?
CH4
Photosynthesis is best described by what chemical reaction?
CO2 + H2O + photon → O2 + CH2O
Which is not a contributing factor to the seasonal cycle in atmospheric Co2?
CO2 is a greenhouse gas
What chemical reaction ultimately removes the excess carbon from the atmosphere and ocean?
CaSiO3 + CO2 → CaCO3 + SiO2
When was most coal formed?
Carboniferous period 300 Mya
Natural gas is
Fossilized plankton
What is the first molecule that CO2 forms when dissolved in water?
H2CO3
Which chemical reaction describes ocean acidification?
H2CO3 → H+ + HCO3−
In what form is most of the dissolved carbon in the ocean?
HCO3−
When was most oil formed?
Jurassic period 150 Mya
Who created the cloud classification scheme that we still use today?
Luke Howard
Atmospheric Co2 decreases most rapidly in
Northern-Hemisphere summer
Respiration is best described by what chemical reaction?
O2 + CH2O → CO2 + H2O + photon
What causes the seasons?
The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted with respect to Earth's orbital plane
Which of the following federal agencies does not have its own climate model?
USPS
Roughly how much of the recoverable coal have humans used?
a few percent
What is an acid?
a molecule that adds H+ ions to water
With the exception of high-energy nuclear reactions, which of the following is always conserved?
all of the other answers
What is HCO3-?
bicarbonate ion
What is CaCO3?
calcium carbonate
What is CO3- -?
carbonate ion
What is H2CO3 called?
carbonic acid
Which of the following carbon pools has the largest amount of carbon at present?
coal
What do we call a fundamental law of physics that says that stuff is neither created nor destroyed?
conservation law
What is the most certain way to date glacial ice?
counting layers
The acidified ocean is returned to its original pH by
dissolution of calcium carbonate
Coal is
fossilized peat
Oil is
fossilized plankton
Roughly how much of the recoverable oil have humans used?
half
The higher the k and/or ρ of some gas in the atmosphere, the ______ the effective height of emission to space.
higher
What is H+?
hydrogen ion
What is so super about a supercomputer?
it has many ordinary computers connected together
An AMSU measures temperature at many heights in the atmosphere by measuring atmospheric emission at multiple wavelengths on the side of an oxygen resonance that each have a different
k and so a different τ=1 level
Which of the following is not one of the primary pieces of evidence for global warming?
lunar brightness records
For climate studies, what are the two most important instruments inside a Stevenson enclosure?
min-temperature and max-temperature thermometers
Which of the following is a violation of conservation of energy?
none of the other answers
Which of the following is a violation of conservation of mass?
none of the other answers
Which of the following is a violation of conservation of momentum?
none of the other answers
What kind of orbit do most AMSUs fly?
polar
The purpose of a Stevenson screen is to
reflect away sunlight, provide shade, provide a ventilated enclosure
What is peat?
soggy swamp soil
What is serial computing?
solving a single problem on a single computer
What is parallel computing?
solving a single problem on multiple computers at the same time
January is during the Southern Hemisphere's
summer
The timescale for a process is
the time it takes for the process to be mostly done
Studies of boreholes reveal that these layers of the ground are warmer than they would be in the absence of global warming.
upper layers
AMSU records show the atmosphere
warming at low altitudes and cooling at high altitudes
The unique fingerprint of CO2-induced global warming is
warming at low altitudes and cooling at high altitudes
What is acidic water?
water with a high concentration of H+ ions
When the Northern Hemisphere experiences summer, the Southern Hemisphere experiences:
winter
What is another way to write 300 Mya?
0.3 Gya
Ocean acidification puts 60% of the carbon burned by humans into the ocean on a timescale of
1 thousand years
Borehole paleothermometry reveals a mean global ground-temperature increase over the past ~100 years of
1/K
Roughly at what rate are fossil fuels being burned today?
10 GtC/year
The acidified ocean is returned to its original pH on a timescale of
10 thousand years
What is the timescale for a human to grow to its maximum height?
10 years
After ocean acidification and dissolution of calcium carbonate, silicate weathering removes the remaining 20% of the extra carbon still in the atmosphere on a timescale of
100 thousand years
In a business-as-usual scenario, what is a likely concentration of atmospheric CO2 in the year 2100?
1000 ppm
When was the universe formed?
14 Gya
By how much have Berkeley's warm-season maximum temperatures increased over the past 125 years?
2 K
Roughly at what rate is the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increasing?
2.5 ppm/year
What is roughly the per-capita consumption of oil in the United States?
20 barrels/year
Roughly what fraction of the carbon burned by humans is still in the atmosphere as CO2 after 10,000 years?
20%
If the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increases by 100 ppm, roughly how much more carbon is there in the atmosphere?
200 GtC
What is 3 Gya?
3 billion years ago
What is roughly the per-capita consumption of coal in the United States?
3 tons/year
When was Earth formed?
4.5 Gya
How much fossil fuel have humans burned?
400 GtC
What is the current concentration of atmospheric Co2?
400 ppm
Roughly at what rate are the ocean and plants absorbing CO2 at present?
5 GtC/year
If the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases by 100 GtC, roughly how much does the concentration of CO2 increase?
50 ppm
How many GtC were there in the preindustrial atmosphere?
600 GtC
