Chapter 16 - Climate Change

Index of topics:

• Introduction to climate change
• Understanding our past climate:
  • deep-ocean sediments
  • oxygen isotopes
  • tree ring analysis
• long-term temperature trends
• more on the long-term temperature trends
• the last 1000 years
• temperature trend since the industrial revolution
• summary of global warming observations
• Factors affecting climate change:
  • positive feedback mechanisms
  • negative feedback mechanisms
  • plate tectonics
  • Milankovitch cycles:
    • eccentricity cycle
    • precession cycle
    • tilt cycle
• effect of tropospheric aerosols
• effect of stratospheric aerosols
  • Mount Pinatubo SO2 plume
  • global temperatures after Mt. Pinatubo
• nuclear winter
• sun spots
• Global Warming:
  • trends of CO2 and other greenhouse gases
  • other factors possibly contributing to global warming
  • consequences of global warming
  • Source of Observed Global Warming
• Review Questions
• Homework
• practice quiz