Help with environmental science , environmental science homework help
Please answer in full complete sentences
Dimming the Sun.
This assignment requires viewing a documentary film – ” Dimming the Sun.” Click on the link below.
1. What was the significance of the 9/11/01 event in assessing the effect of global dimming?
2a. What effect did grounding of the planes after 9/11 have on daily temperature ranges? 2b. Why was temperature affected?
3. What did Gerald Stanhill’s studies – twenty years apart – indicate?
4. One would think that decreases in solar radiation would cool the Earth. But yet the Earth is warming. Why?
5a. What is the pan evaporation rate?
5b. Has it been going up or down in the last few decades?
5c. Why?
6. Two independent data sets – pan evaporative rates and solar radiation rates – now lead to the same conclusion, i.e., that global dimming is real. Is this phenomenon worldwide, regional, or local?
7. What is causing the decrease in solar radiation?
8a. Greenhouse gasses responsible for global warming (CO2 and water vapor) are invisible. How does this compare with substances that cause global dimming?
8b. What kind of particulates have increased in clouds?
9. What effect does the presence of many small water droplets in clouds have, as opposed to fewer larger drops?
10. How do more reflective clouds effect rainfall? Give example from Sahel in Africa.
11a. In the 1970’s to 1980’s, what effect did pollution from Europe and North America have on
a) clouds over Africa?
b) temperature in Africa?
c) the Northern hemisphere ocean and tropical rain bands?
d) the African moonson?
12. The conclusion thus far is that we must reduce air pollution to improve human health (respiratory diseases), global dimming and its associated droughts, famines, etc. But what would happen if we greatly reduce air pollution? (Quite the irony here!)
13. Peter Cox eloquently delineates the “tug of war” on today’s Earth, summarizing the essence of the whole problem. What are the two components playing against each other?
(this answer is the key thesis of the video).
14. From satellite data, what is the estimate of temperature decrease due to global dimming?
15. What would/will happen to the rate of global warming if we eliminate air pollution and thus global dimming?
16a. If we do get the “double whammy” (increased CO2 increasing warming; decreased particulate increasing warming), about how much will temperature increase by 2050? The last time earth’s temperature increased this much was 3 million years ago!
16b. Given this rise in temperature, how much would sea level rise? (And we thought New Orleans was a problem, being several feet under seal level…)