AP®︎ Environmental Science: Topic 9.5 Flashcards

Global climate change is a persistent shift in Earth’s climatic conditions and circulation patterns; global warming is specifically the long-term increase in average surface temperature

Climate is the long-term pattern of conditions across many observations; weather is the atmospheric condition at a particular place and time

Repeated alternation between colder glacial periods and warmer interglacial periods over geologic time

A preserved physical or chemical feature that provides indirect evidence of past climate conditions

A cylinder of layered glacial ice whose trapped air bubbles reveal past greenhouse gas concentrations and whose chemistry can indicate past temperatures

An increase in average ocean level caused mainly by thermal expansion and melting land ice, leading to coastal flooding, erosion, and population displacement

The increase in seawater volume as it warms, contributing to sea-level rise

Melting land ice adds water to the ocean and raises sea level; melting floating sea ice causes little direct sea-level rise but lowers albedo and removes habitat

The sunlit upper layer of water in which enough light penetrates for photosynthesis

A tropical circulation cell in which air rises near the equator, moves poleward aloft, descends in the subtropics, and returns equatorward at the surface

A relatively narrow band of fast-moving, high-altitude wind whose path is influenced by temperature and pressure differences between air masses

The connected system of surface and deep-ocean currents driven partly by temperature- and salinity-related density differences that redistributes heat worldwide

A soil’s ability to support plant growth and ecological or agricultural functions

The disproportionately rapid warming of polar regions, especially the Arctic, relative to the global average

The fraction of incoming solar radiation reflected by a surface; snow and ice have higher albedo than dark ocean or land

A process in which an initial change causes effects that reinforce and amplify that change

Warming melts reflective snow and ice, exposing darker surfaces that absorb more solar energy and cause additional warming and melting

Ground that remains frozen for at least two consecutive years and may contain large stores of frozen organic matter

Warming thaws permafrost, decomposition releases carbon dioxide and methane, and the added greenhouse gases cause further warming and thawing