METR 110: Earth's Changing Climate

Define climate, distinguish weather from climate, and be careful to avoid characterizing a climate on the basis of a day, a season, or a particular year.

Plot two-dimensional graphs of climate variations, explain what the axes represent and how the data were measured or calculated, read a dependent value from a graphed curve based on the independent value (and vice versa), distinguish nonlinear trends from linear trends, and draw a best-fit line to a graphed linear trend.

Describe the climate of the region in which they live, name its key climate controls, and describe the characteristics of each climate control in their region.

Apply a climate classification system to other regional climates around the globe, and describe how the climate controls vary in each case.

Draw on world map and label atmospheric and oceanic circulation and describe its role in heat transfer in Earth systems.

Define or describe the solid, liquid and gas states of matter, define heat and temperature, convert from one temperature scale to another, and explain how phase changes absorb or release heat, especially in terms of phase changes of water.

Draw and/or label a diagram of what happens to solar radiation entering Earth’s atmosphere and to terrestrial radiation emitted from the surface of the Earth, including the roles of reflection, absorption, and albedo.

Explain and illustrate why the Earth has seasons and show why the polar regions are colder than the lower latitude regions.

Briefly define or describe the manifestations of El Niño and La Niña (and possibly other year- to decade-scale climate events). Show how abnormally warm bodies of warm or cold ocean surface water affect weather on continents.

Describe an example of thermal equilibrium, and show awareness that the Earth as a whole achieves thermal equilibrium by radiating away as much heat as it receives from the Sun.

Draw and describe examples of the common heat transfer processes conduction, convection, and radiation, including examples in Earth systems.

Draw, name, and describe how revolution and rotation of the Earth undergoes cyclic variations in eccentricity, obliquity, and precession, and show how these cycles correlate with the repeated glacial-interglacial climate changes of the Pleistocene Epoch.

Explain how greenhouse gases work.

List most of the important greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and describe the source, role and relative importance of each; describe changes in the amount of CO2 in particular from the Pleistocene epoch on up to the present day.

Explain how production of energy from coal, petroleum, and natural gas alters the carbon cycle and adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

List and briefly describe other anthropogenic effects on the composition and temperature of the atmosphere including urbanization, deforestation, livestock production, and biofuels.

Show awareness that electricity in the inland Northwest is not all from hydropower, and estimate the percentages of electricity in the Northwest power grid from coal, other fossil fuels, nuclear power, and renewable energy sources ( hydropower, wind, and solar).

Distinguish and discuss the roles of conservation of energy and production of energy from renewable or alternative resources in achieving a less polluted future.

Distinguish natural variations in climate over the last century from the recently apparent effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gas additions to the atmosphere.

Inventory the carbon dioxide (or other greenhouse gas) additions to the atmosphere that result from their own actions and describe how the average per capita US greenhouse gas production compares with other countries around the world.

Describe and draw a timeline of the history of terrestrial climate change on a geological timescale (hundreds of millions of years into the past), a Quaternary timescale (hundreds of thousands of years into the past), a millennial timescale, and a most recent century timescale, and give the theoretical explanations of the major warmer and colder intervals.

Define what an isotope is and explain how isotopes of carbon and oxygen are used to provide key information in climate change research.

For the environment, natural resources, and economy of the Pacific Northwest, explain impacts of climate change to date, and forecast future climate impacts, particularly on such topics as the Columbia River, hydropower, agriculture, snowpack, glaciers, floods, droughts, pestilence, disease, and wildfire.

For the whole world, consider how climate change is affecting to date, and in the future may affect the environment, the natural resources, the economies, the countries, the peoples, and the biota of the world, focusing on such topics as the effect of sea level rise on coastal communities, unequal effects on rich and poor nations and peoples, and out-of-equilibrium ecosystems and species extinctions due to climate change.

Speak out and/or write down opinions—which show evidence of being based at least in part on rational knowledge of climate change processes—regarding what if anything the student thinks he or she should do personally, and what society, government, and industry should do, about ongoing and future climate change.