EARTH'S DYNAMIC CLIMATE

OVERALL EXPECTATIONS

By the end of this course, students will:

D1. analyse effects of human activity on climate change, and effects of climate change on living things and natural systems;

D2. investigate various natural and human factors that have an impact on climate change and global warming;

D3. demonstrate an understanding of various natural and human factors that contribute to climate change and global warming.

 Part One:  Introduction

Let's begin by watching the following video...

The Earth's Atmosphere (National Geographic)

Now go to Earth's Climate System   

"Laurie David on Global Warming" (NOW)

follow the link and click on the video to view the film: click here!

Assignment:  Ice Core Model

Ice Cores

An ice core is a core sample from the accumulation of snow and ice over many years that have re-crystallized and have trapped air bubbles from previous time periods. The composition of these ice cores, especially the presence of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, provides a picture of the climate at the time.

Because water molecules containing heavier isotopes exhibit a lower vapor pressure, when the temperature falls, the heavier water molecules will condense faster than the normal water molecules. The relative concentrations of the heavier isotopes in the condensate indicate the temperature of condensation at the time, allowing for ice cores to be used in local temperature reconstruction after certain assumptions. In addition to the isotope concentration, the air bubbles trapped in the ice cores allow for measurement of the atmospheric concentrations of trace gases, including greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.

Ice cores contain an abundance of climate information. Inclusions in the snow of each year remain in the ice, such as wind-blown dust, ash, bubbles of atmospheric gas and radioactive substances. They can also indicate indirectly varations in temperature, ocean volume, precipitation, chemistry and gas composition of the lower atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, solar variability, sea-surface productivity, desert extent and forest fires.

Typical ice cores are removed from an ice sheet, most commonly from the polar ice caps of Antarctica, Greenland or from high mountain glaciers elsewhere. As the ice forms from the incremental buildup of annual layers of snow, lower layers are older than upper, and an ice core contains ice formed over a range of years. The properties of the ice or inclusions within the ice can then be used to reconstruct a climatic record over the age range of the core.

The length of the record depends on the depth of the ice core and varies from a few years up to 800 kyr for the one such core. The time resolution (i.e. the shortest time period which can be accurately distinguished) depends on the amount of annual snowfall, and reduces with depth as the ice compacts under the weight of layers accumulating on top of it. Upper layers of ice in a core correspond to a single year or sometimes a single season. Deeper into the ice the layers thin and annual layers become indistinguishable.

An ice core from the right site can be used to reconstruct an uninterrupted and detailed climate record extending over hundreds of thousands of years, providing information on a wide variety of aspects of climate at each point in time. It is the simultaneity of these properties recorded in the ice that makes ice cores such a powerful tool in paleoclimate research.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

View Ice Core Diagram

Questions on Diagram:

1.      How is reading ice cores similar to reading the rings of a cut down tree?

2.      In what way are Ice coires superior to other means for detecting past climatic conditions such as tree rings, lake cores or historical writings and pictures?

3.      This sample ice-core is less than a metre long and covers 11 years. How long do you expect ice cores drilling depths to have to be in order to recall data for hundreds of thousands of years?  

4. Ice cores can be used to get temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide data, What else do you think could be found from them? 

Go to Earth's Climate System

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