Factors Affecting Climate
Describing Climate
Human Activity
100
The characteristic pattern of weather conditions within a region, averaged over a long period of time.
What is climate?
100
A graph of climate data for a specific region, the data are usually obtained over 30 years from observations made at local weather stations.
What is a climatograph?
100
An increase in global average temperature.
What is global warming?
200
A layer of gases that surrounds a planet or moon.
What is atmosphere?
200
A method to identify and describe climates based on observable features such as temperature ranges and rates of precipitation.
What is the Koppen Climate Classification System?
200
Relating to or resulting from the influence of humans.
What is anthropogenic?
300
The collective mass of water found on, under, and over the surface of Earth in the form of liquid water, ice, and water vapour.
What is the hydrosphere?
300
The largest division of the biosphere, that have includes large regions that have similar biotic components (plants, animals) and similar abiotic components (such as temperature).
What are biomes?
300
The natural warming caused when gases in Earth’s atmosphere absorb thermal energy that is radiated by the Sun and Earth.
What is the greenhouse effect?
400
A piece of Earth’s outer shell that moves around on the slowly flowing underlying rock layer.
What are tectonic plates?
400
A division of earth's surface that has developed over a long period of time and is separated from neighbouring *blank* by a geological feature such as an ocean, desert or mountains.
What is an ecozone?
400
The process by which land slowly dries out until little or no vegetation can survive and the land becomes a desert.
What is desertification?
500
The fraction of incident light or electromagnetic radiation that is reflected by the surface of an object, such as from Earth back into space; an object’s ability to reflect sunlight.
What is albedo?
500
A subdivision of an ecozone that is characterized by local landforms such as lakes, mountains and rivers.
What is an ecoregion?
500
The destruction of the world’s forests through direct human activity, such as logging or slash-and-burn clearing for agriculture and grazing, and through the indirect effects of climate change, pollution, and acid rain.
What is deforestation?