Greenhouse Gaslight Gatekeep
GHGs absorb and re-emit this type of radiation, which we feel as heat.
Infrared/longwave
A process that amplifies or dampens an initial change in energy balance is known by this term
Climate Feedback
Ice sheet collapse and Amazon dieback are examples of crossing this kind of threshold, beyond which often can’t be undone.
Tipping Point
Sea ice floats and land ice doesn’t, but this third type of ice floats while staying attached to land.
Ice Shelves
In his 1968 essay, Garrett Hardin described herders who each add one more animal to a shared pasture until it’s ruined, a scenario he called this.
Tragedy of the Commons
When energy in equals energy out, Earth’s temperature holds steady in this state.
Radiative Equilibrium
Ice cores, tree rings, and ocean sediment are all examples of these climate stand-ins.
Climate Proxies
Melting land ice adds water to the ocean and raises sea level. Greenland and this continent are home to the world’s two ice sheets.
Antarctica
The Keeling Curve’s annual sawtooth happens because plants across the Northern Hemisphere take up CO₂ in the spring and release it in this season.
Autumn
Public hearings, open meetings, and community consultations are tools of this kind of justice, which is about fair process rather than fair outcomes.
Procedural Justice
Incoming solar radiation, composition of the atmosphere, and this third process, control Earth’s energy balance.
Albedo
Increased solar luminosity upsets Earth’s energy balance before temperatures can catch up, an imbalance measured in watts per square meter.
Radiative Forcing
In the scenario names SSP1 through SSP5, the ‘P’ stands for this word, a narrative for climate futures.
Pathways
To project future warming under different emissions scenarios, scientists run these programs that divide the atmosphere and ocean into a 3D grid of boxes.
Climate Models
Groundwater is an example of this type of resource, which is hard to fence off but can be used up.
Common Pool Resources
Methane traps 32 times more heat than CO₂ over a century, according to this metric.
Global Warming Potential
This forcing operates over tens of thousands of years and can impact feedback loops such as ice-albedo feedback, CO2 absorption in the ocean, the biologic pump, and dust production.
Milankovitch Cycles
Increasing ocean temperatures can bleach and kill these living structures, home to about a quarter of marine species, and scientists consider their widespread die-off an early tipping point.
Coral Reefs
The ‘C’ in RCP8.5 stands for this word, the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases that each scenario assumes.
Concentration
In 1991, hundreds of delegates gathered in Washington, D.C. for the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, which adopted this set of 17 guiding statements for the movement
Principles of Environmental Justice
Measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, atmospheric CO₂ now sits at roughly this many parts per million.
426 ppm
In the silicate weathering cycle, the dissolved products wash into the ocean, where organisms use them to build these hard parts, locking carbon away in sediments
Shells/carbonate skeletons
Meltwater from Greenland could weaken this Atlantic circulation, which occurs when cold, salty water sinks in the north, and helps keep Europe milder.
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)
When this frozen ground on the Arctic thaws, it releases stored carbon as CO₂ and methane, which causes more warming and more thawing.
Permafrost
This tenet describes the belief that all people belong to one moral community, no matter which country they live in.
Cosmopolitan Justice