Introduction to Global Climate Change - Climate Sensitivity

1. Can climate models be run on personal computers? No 2. Which of the following is the threshold beyond which the current skill for weather forecasting is relatively low? 8 Days 3. What is the equalizing temperature change in response to changes in external forces of the boundary conditions of climate? Climate Sensitivity 4. What is a violent rotating column of air in contact with the ground, usually associated with a thunderstorm? Tornado 5. Which factor is not important to produce Hurricane? Strong Shear 6. What takes the largest number of lives? Storm Surge 7. What is the Saffir-Simpson scale rate? Hurricane The potential of a hurricane to cause damage 8. What are two most dominant factors to determine frequency and intensity of winter storms in the US? 1. El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). 2. North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). 9. What is an example episode of singularity? Indian summer 10. Global climate models employ parameterizations to estimate processes that are ( ). Too small to calculate precisely. 11. The atmospheric concentration of a gas depends on its emission into the atmosphere and its rates of physical, chemical and biological removal. The time to lower the concentration of the gas to ( ) of its original amount is its atmospheric lifetime. 37% 12. If emissions of CO2 could be held at current levels, the atmospheric concentration would ( ). Increase throughout the century. 13. Climate sensitivity is the resulting temperature change in response to a significant change of the external forcing of the systems’ boundary conditions. The IPCC assesses the sensitivity to the projected CO2 changes to be about ( ) degree. 2.1 - 4.7 14. The occurrence of weather or climate events above the threshold value of the upper range or below the lower range threshold of observed values is a(n) ( ). Climate extreme 15. The increasing heavy precipitation instances have been most prevalent in the ( ) U.S. Northeast 16. Modeling studies show that tropical cyclone formation is linked to variation of the thermohaline circulation through the ( ). Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). 17. A warming climate may produce ( ) hurricanes. more strong but fewer weak 18. For marginally dry regions of the USA, a warmer climate would likely lead to ( ) droughts. more 19. A climate tipping point is the change of the climate system from one relatively ( ) state to another, very different one. stable 20. Potential tipping points include all except ( ). Ocean acidification. 21. Large-scale intervention to produce forcings in the climate system to offset climate change consequences is a goal of ( ). Geoengineering 22. Fossil fuels are so called because natural geologic processes buy, compress and hear ( ). Organic plant and animal material. 23. Renewable energy sources include ( ). 1. Solar power 2. Hydro power 3. Tidal power 4. Geothermal energy 5. Wind 6. Biofuels 24. Strategies addressing anthropogenic climate change must consider our ( ). Demand for Energy 25. Extreme fertilizing tropical ocean waters with iron has produced blooms of algae that directly remove CO2 from the ( ). Upper layers of ocean water that are in contact with the atmosphere. 26. Injecting salt crystals over the ocean to grow cloud droplets has been proposed in efforts to make the clouds ( ) thereby affecting the radiation budget. Brighter 27. Sulfate haze produced by volcanic eruptions has lowered Earth’s temperature for a year or so. Proposals to inject such aerosols into the stratosphere on an on-going basis for this effect is one example of ( ). Geoengineering 28. ( _) models run on computers provide approximate representations of real systems using mathematical relationships. Numerical 29. Subsystems within a climate model calculate their respective quantities that are then shared at boundaries between their regions through ( ). Coupling 30. There has been a demonstrated trend in heavy precipitation events in the U.S. involving the ( ). Number and intensity of events.