Geography lab
Geography 1001 Name________________________________________ Exercise 8 Climate Change – Past and Present Much of our understanding of past climate change comes from analysis of ancient atmospheric gas bubbles trapped in ice cores derived from Greenland, Antarctica, and high mountain ice caps from around the world. In this exercise you will interpret carbon dioxide (CO2) and temperature data derived from two Antarctic ice cores—the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) ice core from Dome C and the Vostok ice core. These two correlated stations provide some of the longest data records for CO2 and temperature and have also been matched with ocean sediment core records to provide scientists with an excellent reconstruction of climate changes for the past several hundred thousand years. For further background information please refer to Chapter 10, Section 10.1 in your text. The following figures and questions have been excerpted from Thomsen, C. and Christopherson, R., 2015. Lab Exercise 18 in Applied Physical Geography, 9th ed. Pearson Publishing. Examine Figure 1. This EPICA ice core is 3270 m (10,729 ft) long. So far, scientists have analyzed the top 3189.45 m, revealing more than 800,000 years of climate. The figure shows CO2 in parts per million (ppm) and temperature anomalies in Celsius degrees relative to the average for the past 1000 years. 1. How many years of data are displayed from the EPICA ice core record? How many years between each horizontal grid line? 2. What and when are the maximum and minimum temperature anomalies recorded? What is the range? Max: When: Min: When: Range: 3. How many interglacials (times where the temperature deviation reached 0° C or greater) do you detect over the past 450,000 years? (use broad zones if there are multiple spikes in proximity) What is the average time between interglacials (use greatest spike in a zone)? 4. How much has CO2 varied in the EPICA record? Highest value: When: Lowest value: When: Range: 5. How many times has CO2 exceeded 270 ppm in the past 450,000 years? Examine Figure 2. The Vostok ice core is 3310 m (10,860 ft) long. The full record extends back to more than 400,000 years before present. The figure shows CO2 in parts per million (ppm) and temperature anomalies in Celsius degrees. 6. How many years of data are displayed from the Vostok ice core? How many years between each horizontal grid line? 7. What and when are the maximum and minimum temperature anomalies recorded? What is the range? (if two appear identical then just choose either one) Max: When: Min: When: Range: 8. How many interglacials (times where the temperature deviation reached 0° C or greater) do you detect over the past 450,000 years? (again, use broad zones if there are multiple close-spaced spikes). _________________ What is the average time between interglacials? __________________ 9. How much has CO2 varied in the Vostok record? Highest value: ________ Lowest value: ________ When: ___________ When: ___________ Range: ___________ 10. How does the average time period from peak to peak temperature and CO2 at Vostok compare to that for the EPICA record? 11. Interglacial-glacial period climate cycles are often referred to as appearing saw-toothed, with an abrupt change followed by a more gradual change. When do we see an abrupt change? When going from interglacial to glacial times, or when going from glacial to interglacial times? Conversely, when do we see a more gradual change? 12. Why do you think it would be important to compare ice core records from different locations? What other locations would you examine to study global climate? Figure 3 shows the global annual mean temperature in degrees C from 1880 to 2013, and Figure 4 depicts annual CO2 levels from 1958 to April 2014 as measured at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. Figure 5 shows monthly CO2 values from 2010 to April 2014. The CO2 units are in parts per million (ppm). 13. Briefly describe the general characteristics of the CO2 data set of Figure 4 using the questions below. What are the maximum and minimum CO2 concentrations? Max: When: __________ Min: When: __________ 14. What is the general trend in CO2 values over this time period? 15. Compare the range of CO2 values in Figure 4 with the CO2 values on the Vostok and EPICA ice cores. 16. The CO2 values in Figure 4 shows two patterns of change: a longer trend and a shorter pattern. How long is each short-term oscillation? (These are seen in more detail in Figure 5; see text Figure 10.29 for further information about seasonal fluctuations in CO2 values). 17. Which months of the year have the highest and lowest values on Figure 5? Highest: ____________ Lowest: ______________ 18. What causes this short-term oscillation? 19. Go to the website for www.co2.earth to see current CO2 measurements. What is the value of the most recent month? What would it be if it were 50% great
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