Global Weather Definitions For Climate Change
There are a lot of words being used to describe current weather events – but what do they all mean?
Sometimes people use the same word to descibe 2 different events or activities, and other people use completely the wrong one! Sometimes the sources we use get it wrong too, to fit with a headline or because it gets better effect.
So what I have put together here are a few of the most heard of climate related words and a short explanation of each that follows:
Weather:
The outdoor experience you have on a day to day basis where you live, for example ‘sunny’ or ‘heavy rain’ Weather is only local to you, with sunshine and heavy rain sometimes only a few miles apart. This is also true for events like hailstorms which fall in very specific locations.
Climate:
All the weather experienced in the whole world all summed up in one sweep. So even if you had a lot of rain local to you, the whole climate could actually becoming drier – as it takes into account all the weather around the whole world. This is why you might hear that the world is getting warmer, but you then get weeks of snow falling in the winter!
The Atmosphere:
All the air around and above us is termed the ‘atmosphere’ yet it is divided into 4 distinct layers that all have their own specific behaviours. The lower layer that we are surrounded by rises only about 4 km into the air and contains virtually all the breathable gases out there. There are 3 more layers above it:
Troposphere – Lowest Layer: Contains breathable gases and gets colder as you move upwards.
Stratosphere – 2nd layer: Contains the Ozone Layer towards the top, so gets warmer as you move up.
Mesosphere- 3rd layer: The coldest part of the atmosphere, falling below -90 centigrade.
Thermosphere – Final Layer: Over 85km high, this layer is the thinnest and leads out into space.
The atmosphere is held in place by gravity, and is the only reason why there is an abundance of life on Earth. Without the gases in the sky, the plants and animals would eventually be killed by the heat of the sun and there would be no water at all.
Ozone Layer:
This thin layer of the gas ozone in the upper stratosphere is very important to life on Earth. Ozone is a very unsteady gas, and this is used to our advantage by the way it reacts to ultra-violet radiation – it basically absorbs it all way up in the sky so it doesn’t fall to earth and cause terrible damage to skin and genetic material hidden inside of us.
As a result of damage to this layer, a hole appeared in the southern hemisphere and there was a very noticeable rise in radiation related illnesses and deaths. Ozone, however, is also a greenhouse gas.
Greenhouse Gases (GHG):
These atmospheric gases are all able to trap heat from the surface of the Earth and also to reflect it back down to the ground – both action are raising the temperature of the surface.
As humans have greatly increased the amount of one of these GHG’s (carbon) in to the atmosphere, this heating effect has been increased and the Earth is now experiencing much warmer temperatures than over previous centuries (and eras) this continued activity that is now referred to as global warming.
Global Warming:
The increased global average temperatures experience today as a result of increased human activity in relation to releasing GHG’s. The stresses caused to the atmosphere and weather systems by these great and prolonged changes can put pressure and stress on some of the natural systems currently in place.
For example, changes to rainfall patterns (due to changes in land and ocean temperatures), increased flooding (due to warmer water being ‘bigger’ than cooler water) as well as droughts and other severe weather events. And all these events added together can be defined as climate change.
Climate Change:
By changing all the local events, there will become a great noticeable event – and this is represented y our changing climate. Basically, stresses on natural systems have started to change weather patterns across the globe, and following the normal feedback systems in nature – this can only lead to massive change.
If you read about how delicate weather systems already are with regards to rainfall, storms and sea level rises – you will see how easy it is to disrupt them. And this is just what rising temperatures are doing today.
Not all severe weather events are purely down to human activity and the climate has changed over the history of the Earth on a massive scale – like ice ages; but never this fast. There will soon be a change in the frequency and/or location of those events over time – and this will definitely be the effects of human-induced climate change as opposed to a natural change.
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May 29th, 2010 at 6:34 am
Those definitions are really useful.. I’ll use this as a reference to my articles.