-
abate
– to counter an increase, reduce -- to become less intense or widespread
-
abrupt
climate change
– a forced transition in the prevailing climate patterns so sudden
that it occurs in a human lifetime. More
-
adaptation
– technically
the class of responses to global warming that require changes in human settlement
patterns or social and economic practices.
-
albedo
– the reflectivity of any surface. White sand beaches for example --like
snow or ice-- have high reflective capacity so sunlight is reflected into
the air, while black sand beaches (volcanic) or dark dust will absorb more
radiant energy from the sun. Thus, darker surfaces have a low albedo.
-
biodiversity
– an index or measure of variety in natural areas; a complex set of
descriptions of life's variety in places
-
carbon
cycle – one of several necessary geological and biological
movements of compounds where in elements --called
biogeochemical cycles- are moved from rocks, into the soil, then to the
water and then into the air and back again into rock or into soil by the
physical, chemical and living processes of any terrain.
-
climate
– the average weather patterns typical of a particular place on earth
based in part on temperature and rainfall patterns over a long period of
time, such as centuries; but ranges from decades to millions of years.
-
Climate
change –
any long-term change in the pattern of statistics that characterize weather,
temperature and precipitation over the course of a period where one set
of conditions is replaced by another: glacial or ice age conditions, for
example, are replaced by an interglacial warming period.
-
Climate
chaos
– the term used in Great Britain and other countries to express the
abrupt, unpredictable and unprecedented changes in weather patterns over
vast regions and affecting many different biological associations.
-
feedback
– a specific pattern of relations describing the responses between
an initial condition and a subsequent set of events.
-
forcing
–
any influence that changes the motion of a body, mass, or measurable entity
which stresses the existing condition such that an acceleration in magnitude
can be detected in the material.
-
greenhouse
– literally a glass or transparently enclosed place where sunlight enters
and heat is retained. Figuratively the term was applied to the combined influence
of the earth's transparent atmosphere wherein the existence of certain vaporous
gases raises the planet's surface temperatures above freezing fro most of
the planet.
- Greenhouse
gases see
also. The
planet's atmosphere contains water vapor, nitrogen oxides, methane and chloroflourocarbons
in addition to Carbon dioxide that trap radiation and remit heat.
- Global
warming –
-
heat
– the common,
or lay person's term for thermal, microwave, or long-wave
radiation that causes atoms to oscillate and thus convey an increased
movement measurable as a change in temperature.
-
mitigation
– specific actions taken to make-up for or compensate for some previous
action with the intent of ameliorating (making less, or minimizing) the
effects of the initial impacts. To plant trees after
one has chopped down a forest.
- optimum, law
of –
in ecology
the notion that there is a range within which functional patterns continue
to operate; but that below which, or above which discernible changes in the
performance of the existing patterns occur and are measurable.
- radiation –
the frequency and period of electromagnetic
disturbances caused by the decay of atomic nuclei;
the visible band of which is called light, sunlight, or reflected moonlight.
- threshold
– a turning point representing some discernible change in the behavior
of things, course of action, or set of variable conditions after which a return
to the preexisting situation is unlikely, if not impossible.
-
weather
– atmospheric
conditions over the course of a day (diurnal), weekly, lunar cycle, season,
or period where measures of temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed,
dew point, precipitation, or solar radiation can be determined and found
to change from one period to the next.
-
yield,
sustained
– the amount of a natural product,
such as a fishery, forest timber or crop that can be used on a perpetual
basis without a loss of the reproductive capacity of the living material
in question.
-
zenith
– the Arabic word for the highest or top most point reached by celestial
bodies as they apparently traverse the sky due to the Earth's rotation on
its axis. Referring originally to the ninety degree angle of declination
of the sun above the horizon commonly called noon, pr solar noon when the
sun is at its highest point in the sky for that day.
