Unit 12: Earth's Changing Climate // Visuals

Animation(s)

Future CO₂ levels: Carbon dioxide is predicted to reach 760 parts per million by the year 2100, twice the levels of today. View animation
Ice cores: Alternating wet and dry layers in the ice cores, representing seasons, provide precise annual records. View animation
Jasper Ridge plots: The Jasper Ridge experiment consists of 128 different treatment areas, manipulating the 4 factors predicted in climate change models: carbon dioxide, heat, water, and nitrogen. View animation
Melting glaciers: Glaciers are disappearing and are giving us a very strong signal that the planet is warming. View animation
Polar ice cores: Ice cores taken from the polar regions, measuring Earth's climate history 650,000 years into the past, indicate each rise in carbon dioxide level is accompanied by a rise in temperature. View animation

Photograph(s)

Flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, 2005: Damage along the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 may be a preview of impacts in other low-lying regions as sea levels rise and storms become more frequent. View image
Polar bear hunting on Arctic sea ice: Polar bears hunt their prey from Arctic sea ice, so climate change threatens their survival. View image

Graphic(s)

Arctic sea ice coverage, 1979 and 2003: According to NASA, Arctic perennial sea ice has been shrinking by 9 percent per decade since the 1970s. This process creates a positive climate feedback by reducing the amount of solar radiation that is reflected back into space from Earth's surface. View image
Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, 1958-2005: Charles David Keeling measured CO₂ concentrations at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, more than 11,000 feet above sea level, to obtain data that did not include emissions from nearby vegetation or human activities. His measurements show a steady rise in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations over 47 years. View image
Comparison between modeled and observations of temperature rise since the year 1860: Climate models produce the best match for current trends when they are programmed to simulate both natural and manmade factors that drive climate change. View image
Components and interactions of the global climate system: Earth's climate is a complex system influenced by sources and processes in the atmosphere, on land, and in the oceans. View image
Earth's energy balance: Earth constantly absorbs energy from the sun and radiates energy back to space. Normally these processes balance each other, but human-driven emissions of greenhouse gases are altering the balance by retaining more heat in the atmosphere. View image
Global temperature record: This time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1850 through 2006. View image
Hadley Centre GCM projection: Climate scientists constantly update GCMs to reflect new insights into processes that drive climate change, such as cloud formation. View image
Ice sheet advance during the most recent ice age: As recently as 15,000 years ago, during the Wisconsin Glaciation, ice sheets extended south into what are now the Midwestern states. Many North American landscape features, including Cape Cod, Long Island, and the Great Lakes, were shaped by this series of glacial advances and retreats. View image
Infectious diseases are affected by climate change: Infective agents and their vector organisms are sensitive to factors such as temperature, surface water, humidity, wind, soil moisture, and changes in forest distribution. View image
Phenacodus, a sheep-sized herbivore found in the Eocene era: Warm temperatures during the Eocene era favored smaller mammals, whose bodies were better able to manage heat than those of larger mammals that preceded them. View image
Pleistocene glacial deposits in Illinois: Thick deposits of various glacial soils cover much of the state of Illinois. View image
Surface air temperature increase, 1960 to 2060: Global climate models calculate many variables that affect Earth's climate, such as air and ocean temperatures, cloud distribution, the size of polar ice caps, and the amount of solar radiation that the atmosphere absorbs and reflects. As the figure shows, climate change is projected to affect all regions of Earth, with the most extreme impacts near the poles. View image
Vostok ice-core CO₂: This ice core data from Russia's Vostok research station at the center of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet shows atmospheric CO₂ concentrations dating back more than 400,000 years. View image

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