January 12th, 2009

Chapter 10: Global Climate Systems


  • No two places on earth are exactly the same, why?
  • Climactic condition:
    • Humidity
    • Heat
    • Elevation
    • Latitude
    • Soil type
    • Non-biotic
  • Ecosystems
    • Self-regulation
    • Communication
    • Nature-balance?
  • Biotic
  • Biomes/Major Ecosystems:
    • Forest
    • Desert
    • Grassland
    • Tundra
  • Climate Elements:
    • Insulation
    • Air pressure
    • Air mass
    • Precipitation
    • Temperature
    • mT-marine tropical
    • mC- marine continental
    • high pressure/low pressure
    • El Nino/Southern Oscillation
    • Classifications pp. 281
    • Koppen system
  • Boundaries-related to air masses, but subject to shift at edges, see p. 285
  • Paleo climatology –pollen courts
  • Climate Change Lecture
    • Stepiup.irg this weekend
    • Reduction of 80% of CO2 by 2050
    • No half measures
    • We have ten years to fundamentally transform our economy, and lead the world in the same direction or “face a totally different planet”
    • Campus climate challenge: 100% clean energy at our school
    • And so we see how the climate shifting can affect small things which may affect larger things (microclimate)
    • Ends with global warming consideration of which we have discussed at length
    • The area w/most concern is the arctic melting ice
  • Ch. 10: Climate-Biomes/Ecosystems:
    • Primary producers, primary consumers, secondary, tertiary, top predator
    • Habitat, conversation, #1 cause, invasive species
    • Size of shape = theory of biogeography of islands or of parcels of land
    • Genetic fitness decrease with inbreeding-bottleneck example
    • As habitat shrinks-less individuals around, resulting in the 6h great extinction, which we are engaged with and responsible for
  • Ch. 11: Systems Thinking:
  • Endogenic system;
    • Deep in the earth radioactive decay of elements created heat via convection
    • Move, warp fracture the upper earth
    • These events can be catastrophic-huge instantaneous events that created mountains, valleys, volcanoes, islands
    • And so the theory of catastrophe didn’t require eons and so the world could have been formed in 5000 years or so
    • Fundamentalists, uniformitarianism, slow change, not as before
  • Pg. 324 Drivers: 
    • 46 billions years ago, the earth conjualeded and sorted out by density
      • Heavier matter sinking into the center of the earth, like iron
      • Solid iron core
      • Liquid iron outer core
      • Lower mantle, upper mantle, athenosphere, lithosphere-uppermost, silica at top
    • The Dynamic Planet:
      • Lithosphere
      • Just as the atmosphere was layered, so is the earth
      • Heated core of molten
    • Geologic Time Scale
      • Begin 4.567 billion years old
      • 30 million old, earth was slammed by impact asteroid
      • Carved out the material that coalesced into the moon
    • The time scale of life: 88% of all time on earth
      • 540 million years ago MYA
      • 100 bacteria evolved –Precambrian (6 major cataclysmic extinctions of almost all life forms)
      • 440 MYA first invertebrates evolved-Cambrian
  • The Poem
  • The earth’s core
    • Inner core
      • Molten iron-perhaps a single enormous crystal, 5500-12000 F, 1400 miles
    • Outer core
      • fluid-reverses magnetism
      • converts thermal and gravitational energy into magnetism
      • reverses polarity
      • 9 times in last 4 million years/500,000 years
      • Magnetic field protects against cosmic radiation and solar wind
    • The mantles- Lower and upper
      • 80% of earth’s volume
      • Rich in oxides
    • Lithosphere- crust 0.43, 43-70 km thick
    • Asthenosphere-weak-plastic of molten rock from radioactive decay
      • Conversion currents move moisture, rocks, slowly deforms crust
      • Hotspots develop like pimples, bring molten rock to the surface-eruption in Hawaii, also thought to be connected to deep pipes in lower mantle
  • Crusts:
    • Continental-granite
    • Oceanic-basalt
    • Irregular-brittle layer that floats on hotter, more dense rock
  • 5 Layers  “Everything Changes, Nothing’s the same”
    • 40-75 km thick-Lithosphere, crust uppermost mantle
    • Asthenosphere-irregularly molten
    • Outer mantle
    • Inner mantle
    • Outer core
    • Inner core
    • Crust is brittle, fractured into larger plates, laying over dynamic core
    • Reverse of magnetism every 500,000 years
    • Small magnetic particles align in the molten state
    • Seismic caves travel differently through different material, thickness or viscosity
    • Oceanic Crust is 3 miles thick-basalt
    • Continental crust is 19 miles thick-granite
      • Mountain building-erosion
      • Isostasy-weight rebound, elasticity
  • Everything changes in the geologic cycle:
    • Hydrologic
    • Rock cycle
    • Tectonic cycle
  • Rock Cycle:  (field trip forms)
    • 8 elements = 99% crust
    • O2 + silicon = 74 %
    • O2- reactive-atmospheric gas, 47% in Rx, 21% in air
    • Minerals:
      • 4200 chemicals in formation
    • Rocks:
      • Assemblage of minerals or mishmash
      • Defined by their origins:
          • Igneous-melted
          • Sedimentary-settled out of H2O
          • Metamorphic-altered by heat and pressure
    • Igneous:
      • five formed from magma liquid rock that intrudes into other Rx lava-extrudes to the surface
      • 90% of crust
      • Batholiths-intrusive rock body like origin of Yosemite
    • Sedimentary:
      • Rocks once uplifted and exposed to the hydrologic cycle
      • Rock begins to disintegrate over time
      • Glaciers, water and wind move mass
      • Sandstone-physically laid down, shale = mud, limestone = CaCO3, dissolved solution
      • Strata-graphy-like a book
    • Metamorphic Rocks
    • Plate Tectonics:
      • Triassic Period-225 MYA = Pangaea-super continent
      • Pan = means all, gea = geo = earth, all one earth
      • Mid latitude coal deposits
      • Construction:
        • Sea floor spreading-linked by a submarine mountain range around the globe called the mid oceanic ridge
        • Mechanism?
        • Magma convection brings hot rock to the surface and breaks the crust
        • So youngest crust is at the cracks
        • Oldest is seafloor, 208 MYA, older rock is gone
        • Ocean trenches-plunging lithosphere beneath the continental plates

 


One Response to “Chapter 10: Global Climate Systems”

  1. Kylie BattName on April 12, 2010 2:12 am

    Прошу прощения, что я Вас прерываю, но мне необходимо немного больше информации….

    администратор/медицинский работник/консультант-продавец/менеджер Paleo climatology –pollen courts
    Climate Change Lecture

    Stepiup.irg this weekend
    Reduction of 80% […….

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