Chapter 1 Global Hazards:

Context Hazard: Widespread threat due to environmental factors such as climate change

Geophysical Hazard: A hazard formed by tectonic/geological processes

Hazard: A perceived natural event which has the potential to threaten life and property

Hydro-meteorological Hazard: A hazard formed by hydrological and atmospheric processes

Vulnerability: A high risk combined with an inability of individuals and communities to cope

Disaster: A hazard becoming reality in an event that causes deaths and damage to goods/property and the environment

Chapter 2 Global Hazard Trends:

Frequency: How often an event of a certain magnitude occurs

Magnitude: The size of the event

El Nino: The appearance of warm surface water from time to time in the eastern equatorial pacific

La Nina: The appearance of colder than average sea surface temperatures in the central and east equatorial pacific

Chapter 3 Global Hazard Patterns:

Asthenosphere: A semi-molten zone of rock underlying the earths crust

Conservative Boundary: A boundary between plates where the movement of the plates is parallel to the plate margin and the plates slide past each other

Constructive Boundary: A boundary between plates where the plates are diverging or moving apart

Destructive Boundary: A boundary between plates where the plates are converging (moving together)

Lithosphere: The crust of the Earth, around 80-90km thick

Magma: Molten material that rises towards the Earths surface when hotspots within the asthenosphere generate convection currents

Plates: Rigid, less dense slabs of rock floating on the asthenosphere

Hotspot: A localised area of the Earths crust with an unusually high temperature

Plume: An upwelling of abnormally hot rock within the Earths mantle

Inter-tropical convergence zone: A zone of low atmospheric pressure near the equator. This migrates seasonally

Chapter 4 Climate Change and its Causes:

Climate: The average conditions of precipitation, temperature, pressure and wind measured over a 30-year period

Climate Change: Any long-term trend or shift in climate detected by a sustained shift in the average value for any climatic element

Thermohaline Circulation: A global system of surface and deep-water ocean currents, driven by differences in temperature and salinity between areas of the oceans.

Thermal Expansion: The increased volume of the oceans as a result of their higher water temperatures leading to sea level rise. It accounted for about 60% of sea-level rise in the late twentieth century

Climate Forcing: Any mechanism that alters the global energy balance and forces the climate to change in response

Albedo: How much solar radiation a surface reflects

Enhanced Greenhouse Effect: This occurs when the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increase owing to human activity

Fossil Fuels: Energy sources that are rich in carbon and which release carbon dioxide when burnt

Global Warming: A recently measured rise in the average surface temperature of the planet

Greenhouse Effect: The warming of the Earths atmosphere due to the trapping of heat that would otherwise be radiated back into space it enables the survival of life on Earth

Tipping Point: The point at which a system switches from one state to another

Feedback Mechanism: Where the output of a system acts to amplify or reduce further output

Chapter 5 The Impacts of Global Warming:

Habitat: The environment of plants and animals, in which they live, feed and reproduce

Permafrost: Permanently frozen ground

Eustatic Change: Change in sea level due to change in the amount of water in the oceans

Isostatic Change: Movement of land in response to loss or gain of mass

Chapter 6 Coping with Climate Change:

Adaptive Capacity: The extent to which a system can cope with climate change. In human systems it depends on available human, physical and financial resources

Climate vulnerability: The degree to which a natural or human system lacks the adaptive capacity to cope with climate change. Vulnerability is a result of the magnitude of the change, its speed of onset, the sensitive of the system and its adaptive capacity

Biofuels: Fuel such as ethanol extracted from plants

Mitigation: Reducing the output of greenhouse gases and increases the size of greenhouse has sinks

Adaptation: Means changing our lifestyles to cope with a new environment rather than trying to stop climate change

Greenhouse Gas Sinks: A natural or artificial reservoir that accumulates and stores some carbon-containing chemical compounds

Chapter 7 The Challenge of Global Hazards for the Future

Sustainable Development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs