CLIMATE/CHEM/ENVIRON/ENSCEN 105 Exam #1 Important Concepts
1. Difference in timescales and predictability of weather, climate and geology
2. Factors that influence climate
3. Forcing versus cause and effect
4. Positive and negative couplings
5. Positive and negative feedbacks. Which are stable/unstable? How can you tell?
6. Daisyworld example, including when the system is stable and unstable.
7. What is albedo? How can we alter Earth’s albedo?
8. How does temperature change throughout the different layers of the atmosphere?
9. What are these layers called? Know the important characteristics of these layers.
10. What are the “pauses” in between called?
11. Major molecular components of the atmosphere and their variability
12. Major greenhouse gases
13. Conversion between Celsius and Kelvin
14. The Ideal Gas Law
15. Relationship between buoyancy and density
16. Figure 2-13 in the book.
17. Relationship between energy and wavelength
18. Sources of shortwave versus longwave radiation
19. Inverse square law and variations in solar flux
20. Absorption, emission, transmission and Stefan-Boltzmann law
21. Calculating the effective equilibrium radiating temperature of an object
22. Greenhouse effect and important greenhouse gases
23. Basics behind cloud formation
24. Forcing versus perturbation
25. Ice-albedo feedback, water vapor feedback, and possible cloud feedbacks
26. Net effect of clouds on radiation (low vs high)
27. Incoming solar radiation versus emitted infrared energy at the equator and poles
28. Transport of heat: what are the different methods?
29. Hadley circulation, convergence and divergence.
30. Where do we see the Earth’s deserts? Why?
31. Where do we see the most violent weather? Why?
32. What is the ITCZ?
33. Coriolis effect and circulations it causes
34. Eccentricity and obliquity. When are we closest to the sun? Why isn’t this the
warmest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere?
35. Sea breeze and land breeze. How do these relate to the monsoons?
36. General motion around a low/high pressure center in the Northern
Hemisphere/SH
37. Global hydrologic cycle reservoirs and calculating residence time


Ocean Circulation:
38. Heat transport mechanisms
39. Why do ocean surface temperatures change more slowly than land?
40. What role does the ocean/atmosphere play in the redistribution of
energy from equator to pole?
41. Ekman Spiral
42. How do gyres circulate in each hemisphere and what phenomenon
causes this?
43. Where does convergence/divergence within the gyres occur and why?
44. Where does upwelling/downwelling occur within gyres and near coastlines and
why?
45. What are geostrophic currents? Example?
46. How do warm/cold currents affect climate (on land)?

Thermohaline Circulation:
47. What drives the thermohaline circulation?
48. How do changes in temperature/salinity affect ocean density?
49. What is the timescale of the thermohaline circulation?
50. Why should we be concerned if it shuts down?
51. How did it play a role in the Younger-Dryas?

El Nino
52. What is the Walker Circulation’s role in El Nino?
53. Understand how/why water “piles up” in the Western Pacific in non-
ENSO years, frequency of El Nino
54. What happens in an ENSO year (during an El Nino event) in the
atmosphere and ocean?
55. How does an El Nino affect the biological cycles in the Eastern
Pacific?
56. What are some teleconnections?

Climate Modeling
57. Global Climate Models (GCMs): how are they built, how are they run and what
makes them differ from weather prediction models 58. Understand their strengths and weaknesses 59. Be able to hypothesize improvements needed if the model is too hot or too cold.