Climate Change: Carbon

footprints and cycles

 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

What is climate change?

What do you think climate change is?
What do we actually mean when we talk about climate?
How is it measured?
What affects it?
What effect is climate change having?
What can we do about it?
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

How has the global temperature changed?

Temperatures over the last 400 000 years obtained

from the Vostok ice core, the longest continuous ice-
core record to date
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

Variations of the mean surface temperature during the last

140 years:
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

What questions should you be asking when presented

with data like this?
Where are the observations made? (in towns, open
countryside, at sea; developed countries only or mostly
northern hemisphere?)
How are the measurements made? (is a daily average
taken, or highest temp of the day, are night time
temperatures included)
What instruments are used? And how are they
calibrated?
How are the global averages calculated?
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

What affects the climate?

The Earths surface is warmer than we might expect considering the
amount of radiation reaching us from the sun.
Some gases in the atmosphere absorb infrared radiation that has
been emitted by the surface.
These gases occur naturally in the atmosphere so our planet is
warmer than expected and can support life.
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

Greenhouse gases
- So what are these greenhouse gases?
Water vapour; carbon dioxide; methane; nitrous oxide and
ozone.
- How do greenhouse gases absorb the infrared radiation?
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

This table shows changes in concentrations of the key

natural greenhouse gases and some synthetic gases
(halocarbons that are now banned)
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

Effect on global climate

How do we know that human activities are having an effect on
climate?
Scientists use models to simulate the Earths temperature variations
and to predict what may happen in the future.
This diagram shows observed temperatures (red) and modelled
predictions of the Earths temperature over the last 140 years.
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

The carbon cycle

Anthropogenic versus natural carbon emissions
The natural carbon cycle:
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

Green arrows terrestrial cycle (short time-scale, moths/years to decades)

Photosynthesis by green plants removes CO2 from the atmosphere (CO2
that isnt respired is fixed carbon)
Respiration of plants returns CO2 to the atmosphere
Transfer of fixed carbon to the store of dead organic matter in soil and
detritus
Carbon returned to the atmosphere by decomposition (respiration of
decomposers and detritivores)
Blue Arrows oceanic cycle (intermediate time-scale, up to 1000 years)
CO2 dissolves into surface waters (dissolved inorganic carbon, DIC)
CO2 outgases from the ocean (E and F are approximately balanced)
Fixed carbon exported to deep ocean (planktonic debris, faecal pellets of
animals and other detritus)
Upward movement of deep DIC-rich water
Sinking of lower-DIC content surface waters
Brown arrows long-term geological cycle (hundreds of millions of years)
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

Anthropogenic CO2
The global budget of CO2 for the 1980s showing average annual
values in GtC y-1.
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

The two main anthropogenic sources of CO2 are:

burning fossil fuels and
changing land use (nearly 90% attributed to loss of carbon from
forest ecosystems)
So how much CO2 has been released to the atmosphere due to
human activities during the last 200 years or so? (major period of
industrialisation)
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

Carbon footprints
What do you think should be taken into account when
calculating your carbon footprint?
Now take a look at the carbon calculator.
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

Reducing emissions
How might you reduce emissions of carbon dioxide?
(on a personal level rather than industrially based)
Think about what you now know about the carbon cycle and
what affects your footprint?
 Climate Change: Carbon footprints and cycles

Further Resources
If you have found this session interesting why not try a course with
the Open University
Please go to www3.open.ac.uk/study for further details or call 44(0)
845 300 60 90
http://climateprediction.net/ a project launched in September 2003
to explore the uncertainty in climate model predictions by using
distributed computing.
Calculate your carbon footprint online at:
http://www.bp.com/iframe.do?categoryId=9032780&contentId=7
060112
http://www.safeclimate.net/calculator/