How Climate Change Affects Earth's Temperature | 4/9/18 - 4/13/18

Summary:

       This week in science we learned about climate change, but more specifically, how climate change affects Earth's Temperature. What I now know because of what I learned in science is one main thing that causes climate change, that thing is humans. Humans release a lot of out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which causes the temperature to increase because carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide gets released into the air in a number of different ways, oil spills, fossil fuels being burned, cars gas, and more. This heating on Earth creates two different systems, it creates the system of ice covering and temperature, and water vapor and temperature. The system of water vapor and temperature has two different parts, a positive feedback part, and a negative feedback part. The positive feedback process is when their is to much carbon dioxide in the air and the temperature increases causing water vapor to produce from the oceans. This water vapor can either turn into a low thick cloud or a high thin cloud. When the water vapor turns into a high thin cloud the infrared radiation gets reflected back into the earth causing the temperature to increase. The negative feedback process is when water vapor turns into low thick clouds because low thick clouds reflect sunlight out of the atmosphere. Another thing I now know is some ways we can help make climate change less of a problem. One way is to use sunlight as an energy source through using solar panels, buying an electric car or try and use less car gas (you can do this by using a bus, walking, or using some other mode of transportation such as bikes, scooters, skateboards, etc.). These are just some of the things I now know because of what I learned this week.

One of The Simulation Models and Graphs that I
Used This Week In Science

S&EP 2-Devoloping and Using Models:

       I used models to explain and predict behaviors of systems when I used simulator models and the correlating graphs (that were a part of the simulator models) of the Earth to see how climate change affects global temperature. The model showed how carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases affected temperature, how the heating of the earth caused the two different systems mentioned above (the ice covering and temperature system, and the water vapor and temperature system), and more. I had to use these models to explain how global temperature is affected by climate change. I also used these models to predict behaviors of systems as well, such as if the system would heat or cool the Earth (increase or decrease the temperature). These models really helped to me to visualize and understand how climate change affects the Earth's temperature.

XCC-Cause and Effect:

       This week in science the cause and effect relationships that have to do with climate change and temperature. The first cause and relationship I noticed this week is between carbon dioxide, ice covering, and global temperature. The main cause of this relationship is humans that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which increases the temperature causing ice to melt. When ice melts less sunlight is reflected out of the atmosphere which means that more sunlight is in Earth's atmosphere. This causes Earth's temperature to again increase. This is actually a repeating cycle as when the temperature increases because of the less ice covering, it causes more ice covering to melt away. This relationship is really affecting Earth's temperature and may continue to do so if we can fix climate change.
   
Multiplier-Learner:

       This week in science I was a learner because I only new what most people already do know about climate change. This is that climate change is caused by humans and that humans release greenhouse gases into the air that trap heat in the atmosphere causing the temperature to increase. But I knew that there was much more to climate change than just that, and I wanted to figure those things out. So throughout the week I was consistently trying to learn and understand as much of climate change as possible, I constantly wanted to know things. For example, I would always try and understand and see how the simulator models correlated with the graphs. By doing this it helped to visualize what was happening to the Earth because of climate change which helped to get a better understanding of the subject.