Global Patterns

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Global Patterns

• The Carbon Cycle
• Upwelling
• Ocean Currents
• Abrupt Climate Change

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Carbon Storage(sinks)
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Carbon Cycle
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Human Impact

• Extraction of fossil fuels from the ground.
• Burning - called combustion.
• Deforestation - cutting burning trees
• Trees can no longer remove carbon from the air
• Burning trees releases CO2 into the air
• Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas

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Upwelling

• Deep, cold and nutrient rich water rises up
  through the water column.
• Happens along the eastern margins of oceanic
  basins
• Wind and water current directions tend to be
  caused by the rotation of the planet

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• Upwelling Animation (NASA)

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El Niño

• Happens in the Pacific,
• along the equator.
• Caused by a change in the
• wind pattern
• Changes how the Pacific distributes heat to other
  parts of Earth
• A redistribution of rainfall around the Pacific
  Ocean
• Can alter the weather in places far from the
  Pacific.

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Normal conditions

• Upwelling
• Animals plants

• Winds
• Water temperature

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El Niño

• Upwelling
• Animals plants

• Winds
• Water temperature

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The Impact of El Niño A global connection

• Normal Winter El Nino
  Winter

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The El Niño years

• A weak, warm current
• annually around Christmas time along the coast
  of Ecuador and Peru and lasting only a few weeks
• Every three to seven years, an El Niño event may
  last for many months,
• During the past forty years, ten of these major
  El Niño events have been recorded,
• the worst of which occurred in 1997-1998.
• 1982-1983 was the strongest.
• Some of the El Niño events have persisted more
  than one year.

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La Niña

• La Niña (female child) refers to an anomaly of
  unusually cold sea surface temperatures found in
  the eastern tropical Pacific. La Niña occurs
  roughly half as often as El Niño.

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Global Ocean Currents(Surface)
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Conveyor BeltA vast ocean current system(Deep
water)

• Transports heat and moisture around the Planet
• Conveyor is delicately balanced
• Has shut down or
• changed direction
• many times in Earth's history

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Ocean conveyor beltDriven by salt and
temperature differences
Sea ice is made of fresh water - It leaves salt
behind Salty water is Heavier so it
sinks. What happens if there Is less sea ice?
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Impact of Conveyor changes

• Winter temperatures in the North Atlantic region
  would fall by 20 or more degrees
• Dublin would acquire the climate of Spitsbergen,
  600 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
• Significant global temperature changes within
  decades, as well as large-scale wind shifts,
  dramatic fluctuations in atmospheric dust levels,
  glacial advances or retreats and other changes
  over many regions of the Earth.

http//www.columbia.edu/cu/record/23/11/13.html
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The Day After Tomorrow!the first "climate
disaster movie"

• Can it really happen?

http//www.thedayaftertomorrow.com/
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Abrupt Climate Change

• Abrupt climate change" describes changes
• in climate that occur over the span of years to
  decades
• Human-caused changes in climate that are
• occurring over the time span of decades to
  centuries.
• http//www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/arch/

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See the Moviebut remember what you learned in
Earth System Science!
Earth Its all connected