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Material:
Download material is offered in the ACCENT material corner for this edition.
Motivation:
With the increasing awareness of environmental problems guidelines have been developed for emissions. International protocols like the Kyoto protocol have been signed and permits for CO2 release became a sort of contract goods in international trading. A strong motivation to amplify such measures arises from alarming estimations of climate models how our climate could develop in the next decades.
In order to be able to judge the outcomes of such models, the corresponding uncertainty and the limitations of climate modelling it is helpful for the students to have a basic idea how such a model works at all. It will help them to keep the overview in often polarising discussions in politics and media, but also to estimate the confidence levels or climate predictions which might be published in school books and newspapers..
Context and application
Focus on geography:
This magazine is applicable in the context of curricular topics related to changes in global ecosystems in particular in secondary schools. Topics are:
1) Changes in the atmosphere due to natural events and human impacts
Greenhouse effect, energy budget of the Earth and human induced amplification of the greenhouse effect and how it may continue. You may discuss for example the polar regions, strong warming in the Northern latitudes and the role of ice and snow for the albedo of the Earth.
2) Estimating the potential dangers of global and geozonal climate changes.
Discuss with the students the shift of climate zones and potential changes in the ocean streams. But discuss also on which assumptions such estimates are based.
3) Environmental protection as major task of the single citizen and the community of humans
Discuss the limits of space and resources and make in particular use of the graphs showing exponential developments in the past.
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