What to talk about when talking about...
Weather Hazards and Climate Change How heat is transferred around the earth including atmospheric circulation and ocean circulation.
The natural and human causes of climate change. This includes: the Milankovitch Cycles, volcanic eruptions, solar variation, meteor strikes and human production of greenhouse gases.
Evidence of past climate change. This includes: ice cores, pollen analysis, evidence in art and literature and data records.
The impacts of climate change with particular focus on island nations like the Maldives.
The formation of tropical storms. What they need to form, location of formation and direction of travel.
Case Studies: Hurricane Sandy and Typhoon Haiyan. This should focus on causes, effects and responses.
Causes of droughts – both human and physical
Case Study: Droughts in California and Ethiopia. This should focus on causes, effects and responses.
What are the three atmospheric circulation cells?
Explain a natural cause of climate change
What is the enhanced greenhouse effect?
Polar, Ferrel, Hadley
Milankovitch cycles, this is the Earth’s orbit around the sun, when it is further away it is colder. They should use the words eccentricity, precession and axial tilt. Volcanoes or meteor strikes, both add dust to the atmosphere so block the sun and make it colder. Humans are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere which is causing the Earth to warm faster.
Give me some negative impacts of climate change
They should think of habitats being destroyed, coastal flooding, animals and plants becoming extinct, harder to grow crops so food prices increase, forced migration, decreased water supply.
Why is the UK not as cold as other countries at the same latitude?
North Atlantic Drift brings warm water towards us so warms our temperatures.
What was different about the effects of Sandy and Haiyan?
How are the droughts in California and Ethiopia different?
Sandy killed less (150 compared to over 6000) Sa ndy cost more to repair (US$65 billion compared to US$ 2 billion) Sandy left people without electricity while Haiyan made tens of thousands homeless. Sandy’s flooding caused raw sewage to be released. Haiyan caused an oil tanker to crash. In California, there have been job losses in farming as it becomes harder to grow crops, this is also the case in Ethiopia but this is resulting in malnutrition and people dying as they can’t just buy in food from elsewhere. In California the government are helping whereas in Ethiopia they are reliant on NGOs. California’s drought started in 2012 while Ethiopia’s started in 1983.