pollen records’, copyright © 1989 Macmillan Magazines Limited 11 April 2007 created with RSS2PDF.

ORG and
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Figure 3.16: Brown, G. C, Hawkesworth, C .J. and Wilson, R. C. L. (1992) Understanding the Earth, 2nd
edition Cambridge University Press.

Figure 2.10: Parker, D. E. et. al. (1966) ‘A new daily Central England temperature series,
ouxml2rssdemo
1772–1991’, International Journal of Climatology, 12, Royal Meteorological Society.
Pipes Output
www.meto.gov.uk/climate/uk/2003/june.html
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=0F8Z_y7d2xGkWV9fnkartA

video model of changes in the temperature of the Earth: © Crown Copyright. Reproduced with the
permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Acknowledgements
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Introduction

This unit provides an introduction to global warming. We will be considering the history of global warming by
looking at the pattern of ice ages and analyisis of recorded temperatures. We will aim to gather meaningful
information from this data. We will briefly assess the impact and influence of humans on global warming and,
finally, we will examine climate models and how to predict future changes.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes for this unit are to:

Develop an understanding of the current evidence for global warming.

Model and apply the techniques of ?measuring? the Earth's temperature.

Understand the current warming in relation to climate changes throughout the Earth's history.

Explain factors forcing climate change, and the extent of anthropogenic influence.

Assess the ?best predictions? of current climate models.

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1. Natural climate change? Acknowledgements

The chart below shows a record of the global mean surface temperature of the Earth compiled for
the past 140 years. Clearly there is an upward trend, but what does a chart like this really show? Author

This unit was prepared by Tom Power with guidance from Dr Arlene Hunter.

Tom Power is a lecturer in science education at The Open University. His research interests include teacher
education in the global south (www.open.ac.uk/deep) and the CASE intervention. He has been a teacher and
an advisory teacher in East Sussex and a specialist adviser to the TTA teacher research panel.

Dr Arlëne Hunter, Staff Tutor in Science in Ireland, The Open University, is responsible for the management
of the science programme across Ireland and contributes to various undergraduate earth and environmental
science courses. Her research is divided between geochemistry and enhancing the learning and teaching
experience for students and staff.

This unit draws upon many sources, but has been developed primarily from the Open University Science
short course (1998) S103 Discovering Science: 2 A Temperate Earth, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Further acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit:

Charts of: variation of the Earth’s surface temperature, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, natural
forcing, anthropogenic forcing, natural and anthropogenic forcing, carbon dioxide emissions, temperature
change, rise in sea level: copyright © IPCC.
To understand what the chart shows, it is necessary to take the ?long view?, looking back through the whole
history of the Earth.
Extracts from the Open University course S103 Block 2 ‘A temperate Earth?’

Figures 3.3 and 3.5: courtesy of Tony Waltham;

How can we know the temperature of the planet over time-scales of billions of years?
Figure 3.4: Landform Slides;
Is this current warming part of the Earth's natural temperature variation?
Figure 3.6a: The British Geological Survey, copyright © NERC, all rights reserved

Figure 3.7: John, B. S. (1977) The Ice Age, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
What factors affect and force changes to the global temperature, and to what extent are these being affected
by human activity?
Figure 3.10: courtesy of C. Turner

Figure 3.11: courtesy of C. J. Hawksworth

What are the best predictions for change over the next 100 years?
Figures 3.12 and 3.13: West, R. G. (1977) Pleistocene Geology and Biology, 2nd edition, p. 362, reprinted by
permission of Addison Wesley Longman Ltd
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Figure 3.14: reprinted with permission from Nature, 281, 18 October 1979, p. 559, Woillard, G. (1979)
‘Abrupt end of the last interglacial S.S. in North-East France’, copyright © 1979 Macmillan
2. A 4.6 billion-year history Magazines Limited

Climate change is a natural process of warming and cooling that has occurred all through the Figure 3.15: reprinted with permission from Nature, 338, 23 March 1989, p. 312, Guiot, J., Pons, A., de
Earth's history. Throughout geological time there have been ?hot-house? periods and ice ages. In Beaulieu, J. L. and Reille, M. (1989) ‘A 140,000-year continental climate reconstruction from two European

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http://labspace.open.ac.uk order to understand the current situation, it is necessary to have some sense of context and
perspective, from historical and geological time-scales. The document below shows a chart showing
a generalised temperature history of the Earth.
Closing thoughts
Click on 'View document' to see the chart
Of course, doing anything about this needs scientific evidence and understanding, but it also
View document
requires social, economic and technological changes, which can only be achieved through political
will. If you want to explore some of the broader context, a good place to start would be the New
Internationalist issue 357, ?The Big Switch: Climate Change Solutions? at New Internationalist.
We are currently enjoying an interglacial period of an ice age that began approximately two million years ago.
(Ice ages are composed of colder ?glacial? and warmer ?interglacial? periods.) This is at least the seventh
Faced with the sort of predictions climatologists are making, is it sufficient for science teachers to stop at the
ice age in the Earth's 4.6 billion-year history.
?science?, or should we be tackling some of these broader issues in schools?

During the Cretaceous (65?147 Ma) the whole Earth was up to +15 (C warmer than at present, with tropical
If you want to find out more, the Hadley Centre is the UK's foremost climate research centre and provides a
forests covering Antarctica, whereas during the Quaternary (?2 Ma) ice sheets spread across much of
lot of useful information, as does the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change at IPCC.
Europe and the mean surface temperature was up to (5 (C colder than at present. The range of these
changes is much greater than the observed increase in temperature over the past century (+0.6 ±0.2 (C) and
If you wish to view tis simulation in a new window click on 'Launch in separate player'
predictions for the next hundred years (+3 ±1.5 (C).
Launch in separate player
Click on 'View document' to read ?Glaciers past and present?

View document

Activity 4 To help you understand some of the key factors in climate modelling, click on the link above to
Click on 'View document' to read ?Pollen diagrams and ancient climates?
work through a simplified simulation.

View document
In reality, climate modelling is extremely complex, because all the variables are not known. The ability to
develop mathematical models of climate change is constantly improving, but there are still many competing
models, each making different predictions of how the climate will change. All models, currently, show a
significant increase in the global mean surface temperature attributable to human influences.

Activity 1 Past temperatures: before measurement, before people Measuring temperature is a relatively
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recent affair. Galileo Galilei invented his thermometer in 1597, but the longest running record of surface
temperature to the present day only dates from 1815. For periods prior to these measurements, our
understanding of the history of climate change is inferred from geological evidence, primarily:

References and Acknowledgements

Glaciation (showing that much of the northern hemisphere was covered in ice, some 18 000 years BP).
References

Fossilised pollen (showing that over the past 140 000 years, the mean temperature has varied by almost 15
Climatic Research Unit (2003) Information Sheets at http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk °C).

New Internationalist (2003) ?The Big Switch: Climate Change Solutions?, June, issue number 357. Prepare a brief (no more than five minutes) presentation on the information concerning climate change
provided by either glaciation or the pollen record. The presentation should close with 3?7 key ideas to
The Open University (1998) S103 Discovering Science, Block 2 ?A Temperate Earth??, Milton Keynes, The explore. Two resources are provided to help you do this: ?Glaciers past and present? and ?Pollen diagrams
Open University. and ancient climates?. To access these resources, click on the "view document" links above.

Acknowledgements
http://labspace.open.ac.uk

The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence.

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3. Recorded temperatures

Analyses of over 400 proxy climate series (from trees, corals, ice cores and historical records) show
that the 1990s was the warmest decade of the millennium and the 20th century the warmest
century. The warmest year of the millennium was 1998, and the coldest was probably 1601.
(Climatic Research Unit, 2003)

Throughout historical times, fluctuations in the Earth's mean temperature have been recorded. During the
seventeenth century, the Thames periodically froze over during winter and mini-glaciers were present in the
North West Highlands of Scotland. More recently, the 1990s included some of the hottest years ever
recorded in the British Isles, and 10 August 2003 was the hottest day ever on record. An annual temperature
record for central England has been constructed, beginning in 1659.

Click on 'View document' to open a chart of central England temperatures from 1659 to 1995

View document

Look at the chart in the aboce document. How do the readings for 1660?1700 compare to 1960?2000?

You have probably noticed that in the first period most points were below the mean, but in the latter period,
most were above it. Because the data are so scattered, some method is required for seeing the overall trend
more clearly. A single ?line of best fit? (regression analysis) is not appropriate, as it hides small-scale
variations that may be significant. Such changes in the recorded temperatures are manifest throughout the
British Isles, resulting in changes to natural fauna and flora. These changes are also having local economic
impact, such as the northwards spread of vineyards in the UK. (At the time of writing I believe the most
northerly vineyard in the UK is in Swillington, near Leeds.)

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Further reading

For information on changes to flora, click on Science magazine.

For changes to fauna, and economic effects, go to Information Sheet 4, or for the paper quoted at the top of
the screen, Information Sheet 1, both at Climatic Research Unit.

Click on 'View document' to open the data-smoothing information

View document

Click on 'View document' to read about >working with global mean surface temperature

View document

Activity 2 There are two key ways of getting meaningful information out of climatic data sets:

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 data-smoothing;

working with global mean surface temperature ? GMST.

Click on the "view document" links above to read explanations of these techniques. Consider how you might
model these two processes with students.

You may want to consider:

using a maximum/minimum thermometer over 24-hour periods;

data-logging temperature over a longer period;

using a rain gauge;

comparing your own data with data from the Meteorological Office.

(The Meteorological Office provides monthly rainfall and mean monthly temperature data from 1961 to the
present. Click on the link Meteorological Office to access their site: scroll down to ?Past? and click on
?Monthly information? to look at the statistical details.

Sketch out an outline of a teaching sequence that explores data-smoothing and the concept of GMST.

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4. Human influence?

Evidence suggests that global temperature is beginning to rise. There are several factors that could
cause this. Only one is affected by human activity.

Click on 'View document' to view a chart showing the rates of energy gain and loss by the Earth's surface and
atmosphere

View document

Up to this point we have been primarily concerned with evidence and trends, with ?what has happened?. This
sort of analysis does not tell you ?why? something happened. To understand ?why?, we need some sort of
explanatory model that works on a global scale. The starting point of ?why? for climate change, is to consider
energy flows in the climatic system. Click on the 'View document' link above to see a chart showing the rates
of energy gain and loss by the Earth's surface and atmosphere.

Note that even though the arrows starting and stopping in the atmosphere do so in small region in the centre,
the atmospheric energy gains and losses that they represent take place throughout the atmosphere. 100

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units represent the rate at which solar radiation is intercepted by the Earth. The width of each arrow is
proportional to the rate of energy transfer.

If you would like a full explanation of the energy flows in the diagram, click on 'View document' below to read
more.

View document

Activity 3 explores the possible causes that may be disturbing the equilibrium of such a model, and the
evidence of human influence.

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Further reading

The models being used in research take such simple energy flows and increase the ?granularity? of
the components used, to build complex time sequences.

You may like to see Information Sheet 8 at the website of the Climatic Research Unit for a summary of how
these have developed.

Click on 'View document' to see charts mentioned in the activity below

View document

Activity 3 Click here to read Information Sheet 2, ?Causes of climate change?, from the website of the
Climatic Research Unit.

Which of the potential causes are influenced by human activity?

Click on the "view document" link above and compare the charts for greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide,
nitrous oxide and methane) and temperature over the last 1000 years.

Discuss the key features and implications of these two sets of information.

Compare the radiative forcing for the human influences ? what does this suggest?

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Climate models

To understand climate change it is necessary to construct climate models, to explore and predict

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It is clear from these charts that both natural influences and anthropogenic forcing are required to explain the interactions between different factors. Models are tested for accuracy against known sets of data,
recent rises in temperature. before being run forward to predict future changes.

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Running the models forward Comparing modelled and observed temperature

What happens when the models are run forward? It depends upon the models used and the The IPCC comparison between modelled and observed temperatures since the year 1860 is shown
scenarios they are asked to run. It seems almost certain, however, that there will be increases in the in the three charts below
global mean surface temperature, to the order of +1.5 to +4.5 (C ? possibly more, according to
some models and scenarios.

These changes are predicted to be associated with increases in sea level, changes to weather conditions
(e.g. more regular and violent winter storms in the UK) and changes to the distribution of habitats and their
associated organisms.

The current predictions for the global climate in the twenty-first century are shown for a range of scenarios
and models in the charts below. (Chart (a) shows the range of scenarios for CO2 emissions; charts (b) and (c)
show the corresponding predictions for temperature change and rise in sea level.

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