Study Guide: What is Causing Climate Change?

To-Do Date: Apr 23 at 11:59am

Cartoon

In this cartoon, a couple look out over a blighted landscape and say ''Too bad those awful people were right about the environment'' What has caused the landscape around their house to look so bad? What are potential natural causes? Human causes? 

Cartoon

Study Guide Questions 

  1. How can you test ideas about climate change if you can't do experiments? 
    • What are experiments? 
    • What is a  natural experiment or a comparison? 
    • When would you use one or the other? 
    • Give a specific example of a natural experiment used to test events from the past, or about climate change. 
    • What are computer models and how do they test climate hypotheses? (you will be able to answer this by the end of the module)

  2. Is the climate warming? 
    • What is the current average temperature for the earth?
    • How  much warmer is that than historical averages? 
    • Compare the rate of change in the last 100 years compared to the rate of change in the past. 
    • Why do a few degrees matter? 

  3. What can we learn from studying the climate of the geologic past (paleoclimate)?
    • What are the proxies that scientists study to learn about past climate (ie ice cores, etc)?
    • What type of information can they learn from each of these different types of natural records?
    • What do all of these studies show about past climate, past climate change, past CO2 levels 
    • Thinking about the information about natural causes of climate change, what could have caused these past events? 

  4. What are the impacts of climate change? 
    • What changes are there to the United States: temperature, heat wave, precipitation, snowpack, drought

  5. What is driving the current change in climate? 
    • What are natural sources of climate change? (ie what are natural climate drivers)?
    • How do each of these natural climate drivers impact temperatures? (run each simulation to find this answer)
    • What are man-caused climate drivers?
    • How do each of these impact temperatures (run the simulation to find out)
    • Which is  having a bigger impact on climate- natural or human caused drivers?
    • Are there any drivers that are reducing temperature?