Week 14: Causes of Climate Change

 

  1. What did you do in lab today? In lab we talked about our interview with an elder assignment and the different things that people said and what we thought was interesting. We also discussed data analysis and we looked at CO₂ data and saw that the levels have been going up over time. The simulation showed us how greenhouse gases trap heat in the air. Altogether, this helped us see why rising CO₂ levels cause the Earth to get warmer.
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  2. What was the big question? How does climate change work?​
  3. What did you learn in Thursday’s discussion?​I* learned that CO₂ levels can get very high in classrooms and affect how people feel and learn. We also talked about how warmer temperatures cause more evaporation and more rain. Natural causes like the sun and volcanoes haven’t changed much, so most of today’s climate change is from humans. I also learned about the Albedo effect and how melting ice makes the Earth warm even faster.Links to an external site.
  1. What did you learn? I learned that climate is what usually happens over time, and Earth’s atmosphere helps control temperature by letting in sunlight and trapping some heat. I learned how greenhouse gases like CO₂, methane, and water vapor trap heat and make Earth’s “blanket” thicker, causing global temperatures to rise. I also learned about the albedo effect, the carbon cycle, and how ice cores show that CO₂ levels today are much higher than any time in the past hundreds of thousands of years.​
  2. What was most helpful? The most helpful part was learning how greenhouse gases actually trap heat, because it made climate change easier to understand. Seeing examples like melting ice and the albedo effect also helped me picture how the Earth warms faster. The visuals and explanations made the big ideas much clearer.​
  3. What do you need more information on? Nothing right now. ​

5. What questions, concerns, and/or comments do you have? Nothing right now. 


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