climate

• The biosphere is the thin layer of the Earth that has life sustaining conditions.
• Storing carbon dioxide a different way
• Renewable energy
• Reducing emissions
• All the living things on Earth and the environment around them are part of the biosphere.
• The atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere are the other parts of the Earth.
• The Earth is a closed system – energy is exchanged between the system and its surroundings, but matter is not.
• The atmosphere is the layer of gases that surrounds the Earth.
• Nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), trace amounts of argon, carbon dioxide, neon, helium, and methane, as well as atmospheric dust composed of tiny particles such as soot, pollen, and Microorganisms are the components of the atmosphere.
• The troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere are parts of the atmosphere.
• The hydrosphere is all of the water on Earth (solid, liquid, and gas).
• About 3% of the hydrosphere is stored as freshwater in lakes, rivers, groundwater, and glaciers.
• The lithosphere is the solid portion of the Earth that sits above the Earth’s mantle.
• The lithosphere is composed of rocks, minerals, and elements.
• The lithosphere extends to up to 100 km below the surface, under the continents and oceans.
• The lithosphere is warmed mainly by incoming energy from the Sun and to a lesser extent, by the molten material from the Earth’s mantle.
• Thermal energy is the energy possessed by a substance due to the kinetic energy of its molecules or atoms.
• Solar energy from the Sun is radiant energy – it is transmitted as electromagnetic waves; source of almost all of the energy on Earth.
• Radiation is the emission of energy as particles or waves that may be reflected or absorbed by particles of matter.
• Conduction is the transfer of thermal energy through direct contact between the particles of a substance, without moving the particles to a new location; usually occurs in solids.
• Convection is the transfer of thermal energy through the movement of particles from one location to another; particles with more kinetic energy will take up more space, becoming less dense and rising.
• The Greenhouse Effect is a natural process that warms the Earth’s surface.
• When the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases.
• Climatographs give us information about monthly temperature and precipitation averages for a given area, with temperature plotted as a line graph and precipitation as a bar graph.
• Sea breeze occurs when the Sun rises, the land warms faster than the water and as the warmer air rises, cooler air from over the water moves in to replace it.
• In areas close to the poles the lower atmospheric temperatures result in air becoming more dense and falling.
• Specific heat capacity can be measured using a calorimeter – a device used to measure the transformation of mechanical energy to thermal energy.
• Quantity of thermal energy (Q) is the amount of thermal energy absorbed or released when the temperature of a specific mass of substance changes by a certain number of degrees.
• Different climate zones are inhabited by different types of organisms.
• Global wind patterns are the result of the unequal heating and cooling of the Earth and the Coriolis effect.
• Levels of organisms are represented on a climatograph as different colored bars.
• Climate is the average weather conditions that occur in a region over a long period of time, usually includes temperature and precipitation.
• Weather is measured over a short time period and reported as a forecast.
• The types and amount of organisms that live in a certain climate zone create the biome of that area.
• Specific heat capacity (c) is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of the substance by 1°C.
• Increased atmospheric temperatures near the equator result in atmospheric gases becoming less dense and rising.
• Heat of vaporisation (Hvap) is the amount of energy absorbed when 1 mol of a substance changes from liquid phase to vapour phase, without a temperature change.
• Land breeze occurs at night, when the water cools more slowly than the land and the breeze reverses itself to become a land breeze.
• Jet streams are currents of extremely fast-moving air in the stratosphere that form at the boundaries of cold and warm air, moving west to east in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
• Factors affecting climate include Average annual precipitation and Average annual temperature.