Project Descriptions

A total of five homework assignments and a single paper are due on the dates indicated in the Course Schedule.

Homework Assignment #5 consists of plotting a graph and extracting information from the plotted data. Several essay questions are posed based on the information you gained from plotting the graphs and related data.

Homework Assignment

Global Warming: Plotting CO2 vs. Temperature

Earth science researchers often use graphs to make it easier to visualize relationships between several factors. Construct a graph showing the relationship between two factors: (1) the air temperature (in degrees centigrade) and (2) the Carbon Dioxide - CO2 - content (in ppm) in recent years. This graph will then serve as a basis for your second task, which is to estimate what the relationship between these two factors might have been in the past and what might be in store for us in the future.

When plotting your graph, you can find information in the text, in the last graph with blue as termperature and a red smooth line, and in the webliography links. When plotting the graph you will have (at least) three values: carbon dioxide or CO2, temperature or change in temperature from the mean [average], and time [years]. The horizontal axis can be Time, and thus the vertical axis can be CO2 on the left side, and Temp. on the right side. That is, you can use two vertical axis. Alternatively, you can graph the change in Temp on the horizontal axis and CO2 on one vertiacal axis, Time on the other, or some combination thereof.

Finally, you can make two graphs, both with one horizontal and one vertical axis and then combine them, either physically or in your description (mentally). The idea here is not to make you suffer through graphing, but rather allow you too explore the inter-relationships of these three factors: Time, CO2 levels, and Temperature. Humans tend to be visual, so describe what you see on the graphs and the relationships that are implied as you combine the data in different ways (i.e., differenct combinations of data on the X and Y axis.

Before plotting the graph, you may want to get the background information about atmospheric greenhouse gases provided at:

You can find the data, directions, and materials necessary to plot the graph through the webliography, textbooks, and by following the instructions at the site listed below.

Submission

After you have completed your graph, please answer the following questions:

  1. What was the CO2 content when the temperature was 4 degrees lower, during an ice age? You will have to extrapolate using a straight line.
  2. Does this give a sensible result?
  3. If the amount of CO2 is negative, either the straight-line relationship between temperature and CO2 is wrong, or other factors must have cooled the Earth at that time. If applicable, what might they be?
  4. How much CO2 must there be to raise the temperature 7 degrees a hundred years from now, assuming the straight-line relationship?
  5. In the troposphere, the temperature falls as one goes higher; this is not the case in the stratosphere.  What are the source(s) of heat in the troposphere and the stratosphere?
  6. What is the tropopause?  Is it different than the troposphere?

Applying Knowledge

Contemplate and evaluate the following quote from Margaret Mead:

  1. Explain the meaning of commons?
  2. What is the 'Tragedy of the Commons"?
  3. What are global commons?
  4. What exactly was Margaret Mead anticipating?

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