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Modeling the Impacts of Climate Change ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY TEACHER GUIDE SERIES Changing Climate A Guide for Teaching Climate Change in Grades 3 to 8 Modeling the Impacts 5 of Climate Change by Tara G Treiber odels help us understand model, the more accurate its predictions struggling to make sense of, such as the universe. They help us of the future will be. cloud and hurricane formation. Because M imagine things that are too Scientists often use computer-based of their complexity, many climate big, too small, too fast, or too slow for us models to help them understand what models are actually simulations in which to see directly. Models are representations is happening right now, as well as what multiple changing factors demonstrate, of phenomena and other concepts. might happen in the future. When all or “model,” how climate has changed and Most students are familiar with simple the pieces of a model are put together, continues to change over time. models, such as one they might make the model can run forward in time to Students may wonder how scientists of our solar system with coat hangers see what the future might look like or make predictions about rising and Styrofoam balls. Such a model helps backward in time to understand the past. temperatures or sea levels, so talking people envision events that happen on a Computer models of Earth’s global about climate models is necessary for size or time scale that they cannot easily climate system are complex. They their understanding. Most climate see. When the planets and sun of such include many data points that represent models today are created and run on a model are all properly arranged as parameters that intersect and interact high-performance computers capable they are in space, students can view how with one another. They include events of processing the millions of equations they move; they can also view how they that take place on different scales of that represent factors that affect global might be aligned in the future. The more time and space. They also include many climate. One major climate-change accurate the initial data that goes into a phenomena that scientists are still model built by Oxford University was set 70 Modeling the Impacts of Climate Change GRADE STANDARD EEI UNIT up to run using the personal computers of volunteers—more than 90,000 computers Grade 3 3 1 2 The Geography of Where We Live in total! This number demonstrates how 3 5 1-3 California’s Economy—Natural Choices much computational work is involved in 3 3 a-b Structures of Survival in a Healthy Ecosystem running climate models. 3 3 c-e Living Things in Changing Environments A model is only as good as the data Grade 4 4 1 3 Reflections of Where We Live used in its construction. Students 4 3 b know that it is important to take 4 6 careful and accurate measurements Grade 5 5 3 d-e Our Water: Sources and Uses in lab experiments. Think about how 5 6 important this accuracy is for using data in climate models. Grade 6 6 2 2 Agricultural Advances in Ancient Civilizations Scientists often check to make sure that 6 2 c our knowledge of climate is accurate by 6 5 e 6 7 looking into the past. They create models using data that represent conditions for Grade 7 7 3 a Shaping Natural Systems Through Evolution a particular time range and then run 7 3 e Responding to Environmental Change the model to see if it can recreate the 7 7 conditions known to have occurred in the Grade 8 8 12 1 Agricultural and Industrial Development in U S past. If it does, the model is considered 8 12 5 Industrialization, Urbanization, & Conservation valid, and the scientists have confidence 8 9 that they can use that model to predict what might happen in the future. CHAPTER OVERVIEW Climate science can be difficult to understand because scientists are Case Study: The Ocean in studying and trying to make sense of large-scale, complex systems across a Changing Climate 73 long periods. Scientists use models to help them better understand these Student Thinking: systems. Climate models that account for many variables and are based Climate and the Ocean 77 on data obtained through careful and accurate measurement are more Case Study: likely to produce accurate models of what is currently happening, as well as Melting Ice on Earth 78 predictions of future impacts. Student Thinking: The climate models today tell us that our Earth systems are going to Ice and Climate Change 80 experience notable impacts from climate change. The ocean is warming Pictures of Practice: and changing in chemistry, which alters the habitats for many marine Melting Ice 81 organisms. Ice in our polar regions and high alpine glaciers are melting fast, Case Study: reducing habitats for polar and alpine organisms and contributing to sea What About Freshwater? 82 level rise. Less freshwater is available during spring melts, and precipitation Pictures of Practice: patterns are changing around the world. Not only will humans need to Surviving Climate Change 83 adapt to these changing conditions, but also all living things must find a Case Study: way to survive or they may perish. Species Coping With Change 84 In this chapter we explore how scientists use climate models and then take a closer look at what these models tell us about impacts on our Earth’s systems. Modeling the Impacts of Climate Change 71 Where do data from the past come from? The answer depends upon the period being explored. If we look at the last 200 years or so, we have very accurate written records of weather parameters such as temperature, precipitation amounts, and number of cloudy or sunny days recorded for a good percentage of Earth’s surface. If the period of interest is over the past 4,000 years or so, scientists can look at anthropological data—everything from birth and death lists, farming records, and the writing of a time, to the evidence of diet, food sources, and tools used during a specific era. These things all can tell us a great deal about what Scientists collect coral cores from a coral skeleton. The coral skeleton shows occurred in past civilizations. different densities based on seasonal and environmental changes over time, When looking even further into the so scientists can study how the environment around the coral has changed in the past. past for evidence of climatological trends, scientists primarily look at they can add more CO2 to the model carbon-dioxide concentrations. As they natural records including ice cores, tree atmosphere or diminish its ozone layer. photosynthesize and grow, they remove cores, and coral bands for information They can alter any number of variables carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and about weather events and climate, as that may affect how Earth’s climate will use it to build their carbon-based tissues. discussed in Chapter 4. As trees and function in the future. Then they can As their growth lowers the concentration coral grow, they incorporate gases run their model to see the results. of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, from the atmosphere or the ocean, One phenomenon climate modelers they can’t grow as efficiently as they did respectively. Some trees and corals have need to take into account when building at higher CO₂ levels, so the effect of high been around for thousands of years, so a model is the processes of feedback CO₂ concentration is reduced. their annual rings or bands can give us loops. Feedback loops can be positive, Clouds and aerosols represent an accurate picture of the atmosphere or thereby magnifying or accelerating an challenges in global climate-change ocean for that time frame. When taken effect, or negative, which reduce an modeling, because they can have a all together, these data can be used to effect. For example, the albedo effect positive feedback effect on heating by create a picture of the climate conditions of ice leads to a positive feedback loop. trapping radiation between them and the at a time and place in the past. The more As ice melts on our planet, there is less surface of Earth, but they can also have bits of data that can be compiled, the sunlight being reflected and more of the a negative feedback effect on heating more accurate the models of our past sun’s energy is being absorbed. As the by reflecting the sun’s radiation back can be. energy is absorbed, the surface warms to space before it ever reaches Earth’s Once scientists have a good faster, leading to more ice melt. As more surface. As the effects of some climate understanding of the past and the ice melts, even more energy is absorbed. parameters are not known precisely and present climate, as well as all the factors While feedback loops are complex, so much new information is learned that influence climate conditions, students can understand the key ideas each year, it is easy to see why results they can generate computer code to about feedback loops and simple from climate modeling seem to change represent the processes as mathematical examples. frequently. However, scientists know equations. To examine how a change in An example of a negative feedback global climate change is happening, current conditions would play out in loop that has been explored by scientists and they are using their best models the future, they can change the variables is that of plant growth. Some plants to predict how Earth might look in and run the model to see the results.
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