Unit 5: Why do climates vary (regionally and over time)?

Climate varies from season to season, from year to year, and from one place to another. The key causes of these variations are, most importantly, the axial tilt of the Earth on its axis (the "reason for the seasons") as well as geographical factors such as proximity to water bodies or mountain ranges. Human activities can also alter climate, not only through increasing carbon concentrations in the atmosphere, but through land use change that has created heat islands and altered hydrologic patterns.

Learning Objectives

1. Appreciate the extent to which climate varies regionally, over geologic and historical time.
2. Articulate how processes that cause climate variation are distinct from those that generate weather variability. Examples of factors include mountain ranges, El Nino events, enhanced greenhouse effect, and land use change, all of which lead to altered precipitation patterns.
3. Recognize that increasing regional resolution of climate observations and modeling allow for predictions of regional climate change.

This unit relates most closely with Climate Literacy Principle 4: Climate varies over space and time through both natural and man-made processes. Also see Teaching About Principle 4 from CLEAN.

Climate Variability

ENSO case study

Dr. Baylor Fox-Kemper discusses climate variability, regional variatio,s and the role of the oceans in climate cycles. Dr. Fox-Kemper is an assistant professor with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also teaches in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC).

ICEE: Climate Variability from CIRES Education & Outreach on Vimeo.

Presentation
Baylor Fox-Kemper – CIRES Fellow [PDF]

Activities

There are a number of high quality resources within the CLEAN collection that relate to climate variability and how it is measured including:

Paleoclimates and Pollen, in which students examine pictures of pollen grains representing several species that show the structural differences that scientists use for identification, and

-The Little Ice Age, where students learn about the forcing mechanisms for the most recent cold period, the Little Ice Age (1350-1850) by examining tree ring records, solar activity, and volcanic eruptions during this time period.

Just for Fun

Video Intro: Take Aim at Climate Change