Global Environmental Change Lecture NotesYour Planet Earth全球环境变化的讲义你们的行星地球.docVIP

Global Environmental Change Lecture Notes: Slide 1. Title Slide Slide 2. Climate is defined as the weather averaged over a long period of time. The standard averaging period is 30 years but other periods may be used depending on the purpose. Climate also includes statistics other than the average, such as the magnitudes of day-to-day or year-to-year variations. Therefore, climate is “the average and variations of weather over long periods of time”. Different “Climate Zones” such as tropical, temperate or polar can be defined using parameters such as temperature and rainfall. Slide 3. “Weather” is the set of all phenomena in a given atmosphere at a given time. The term usually refers to the activity of these phenomena over short periods (hours or days), as opposed to the term climate, which refers to the average atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time. When used without qualification, weather is understood to be the weather of Earth. On Earth, common weather phenomena include such things as wind, cloud, rain, snow, fog and dust storms. Less common events include natural disasters such as cyclones and ice storms. Almost all familiar weather phenomena occur in the troposphere (the lower part of the atmosphere - see figure on left). Weather does occur in the stratosphere and can affect weather lower down in the troposphere, but the exact mechanisms are poorly understood. Slide 4. Science is the search for knowledge. It is the testing of different hypotheses in the attempt to work out how and why things are as they are. For example, by answering scientific questions we can map out the phases of the moon (left) and track the effects of the changing seasons (right). Slide 5. Science allows us to answer questions about our planet and understand the physics, chemistry and biology of the parts of the Earth. For example, we know how nutrients pass through ecosystems (Presenter: Briefly go through the left hand figure. Nutrients such as nitrogen are taken up from