Climate Change and Air Pollution

1
Climate Change and Air Pollution
2
Read

• Chapters 17 and 18

3
Climate Change

• Natural Factors
• Human Induced

4
Global Air Circulation

• Hadley Cell
• 3 cells (show cells)
• Doldrums
• NE Trades
• Horse Latitudes
• Westerlies
• Polar Easterlies
• Coriolis Effect

5
Factors that Determine Climate

• Latitude
• Pressure and wind belts
• Altitude
• Oceans
• transport heat
• moderate climate
• Mountain Ranges
• Geographic Position

6
Climate Zones of Earth

• Koppen Climate Classification
• seasonal variation in temperature
• precipitation

7
Urban Heat Island Effect

• Why are cities warmer
• Less evaporation because little surface water
• heat released when fuels are burned
• tall buildings block wind
• air pollutants absorb long wavelength radiation

8
Climate Change

• Changes in solar radiation
• tectonic activity
• changes in Earths orbit around the sun
• catastrophic events
• changes in atmospheric composition

9
Solar radiation

• Fig. 17-22
• Solar radiation varies
• debatable correlation between duraiton of sunspot
  cycles and global temperature

10
Tectonic Activity Long term effects

• two processes cause climate change
• continental migration
• 250 million years ago (Permian)
• Continents together and over the South Pole
• Permian Glaciation
• ended when Pangea broke up
• mountain building
• global cooling in the past 40 million years
  coincides with the formation of the Himalayas and
  the North American Cordilleran

11
Changes in Earths Orbit Around the SunFig. 17-24

• Eccentricity
• varies on 100,000 year cycle
• Tilt
• currently 23.5 degrees
• varies by 1.5 degrees on a 41,000 yr cycle
• Precession
• wobble of the axis
• varies on a 23,000 yr cycle
• Milankovitch Cycle

12
Catastrophic Events

• Meteor Impact
• release particulate matter into the atmosphere
• cause cooling
• major meteor impact 65 mya
• Alvarez Hypothesis
• Volcanic eruptions
• also release particulate matter
• 1815 Tambora-largest historic eruption
• 1816 one of the coldest years in recorded history
• crop failures Napoleonic Wars led to famine in
  Europe

13
Change in composition

• Increase in greenhouse gases
• carbon dioxide
• methane
• CFC

14
Air Pollution

• Primary Air Pollutants
• gases and particles released during combustion
  and manufacturing
• Secondary Air Pollutants
• generated by reaction of primary pollutants in
  the atmosphere
• smog
• acid precipitation

15
Smog

• Brownish-yellow haze
• auto exhaust reactions with air in the presence
  of sunlight to form
• Ozone in the troposphere
• irritates membranes in the respiratory system
  causing loss of lung function
• increases susceptibility to lung and heart
  disease
• suspected carcinogen

16
Inversions

• Cap of warm air over cold air
• polluted air cant rise and mix

17
Warfare and the Atmosphere

• Fires
• Kuwaiti oil fields - Persian Gulf War
• Nuclear
• Nuclear winter
• Acid and Chemical Precipitation
• Destruction of ozone layer

18

• Nuclear Winter
• pulverized soil is blasted into the stratosphere
• along with soot from fires
• blocks out 95 of solar radiation
• temperature in the No. Hemi. Drop to -25 C even
  in the summer
• deaths due to freezing and starvation
• Acid and Chemical Precipitation
• from industrial, agricultural and domestic
  chemicals blasted into the atmosphere
• Ozone distruction
• heat from the blast converts atmospheric nitrogen
  to nitrogen oxides and these compounds would
  destroy the ozone layer