Environmental Science 1021F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Inuit Culture, Nitrogen Dioxide, Permafrost

• School: Western University
• Department: Environmental Science
• Course: Environmental Science 1021F/G
• Professor: Christie Stewart

Document Summary

Global warming and global climate change are not the same thing: global warming: average temperature increases in troposphere, global climate change: changes in any aspect of earth"s climate. Includes global warming: warmer or colder, wetter or drier. **remember definition of climate; temperature (warmer or colder), precipitation: ice cores taken from antarctica, air bubbles in ice cores analyzed. Past climate change: prolonged periods of cooling and warming, glacial and interglacial periods, temp. change gradual (million yrs) to quick (10-100 yrs) Present: interglacial about 12,000 years, relatively stable global climate, regional climate changes. **eg sahara desert received 20 times the amount of pptn cf 7000 ybp. **consensus importance, can never prove or give absolute certainty. **levels of certainty that a scientific model or theory is true. **co2 didn"t initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming. In fact, about 90% of the global warming followed the co2 increase. Non-anthropogenic and anthropogenic driven changes in climate (past & present)