1. The Carbon Cycle Upwelling Ocean Currents Abrupt Climate Change
Global Patterns
The Carbon Cycle
Upwelling
Ocean Currents
Abrupt Climate Change

2. Carbon Storage (sinks)

3. Carbon Cycle Carbon moves LAND:
Plants and trees use carbon from the air (CO2, photosynthesis) - they grow, and store
carbon. Plants also do respiration - in the dark. Animals too. Releasing CO2
Decomposition - plants and animals bodies. Can be compacted & become fossil fuels.
WATER:
Diffusion: gasses move between ocean surface and the atmosphere.
Plus other processes like on land: respiration, photosynthesis, decomposition
“Marine Snow”.. Rain of decomposing materials that end up on the bottom for hundreds/thousands of years.
Sea creatures remove carbon from water to make shells. Can become rocks - stored for a very long time.
Circulation: Water moving between deep ocean and surface can carry carbon (nutrients) back to surface. Can move to atmosphere too.

4. Human Impact Extraction of fossil fuels from the ground.
Burning - called combustion.
Deforestation - cutting & burning trees
Trees can no longer remove carbon from the air
Burning trees releases CO2 into the air
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas

5. Upwelling
Deep, cold and nutrient rich water rises up through the water column.
Happens along the eastern margins of oceanic basins
Wind and water current directions tend to be caused by the rotation of the planet

6. Most ocean water and some lakes is stratified
Caused by a sharp temperature change called the thermocline
There is little or no mixing of waters above and below the thermocline.
There is water in deep areas of some oceans that has not been to the surface in thousands of years.

7. Upwelling Animation (NASA)

8. El Niño Happens in the Pacific, along the equator.
Caused by a change in the
wind pattern
Changes how the Pacific distributes heat to other parts of Earth
A redistribution of rainfall around the Pacific Ocean
Can alter the weather in places far from the Pacific.

9. Normal conditions
Upwelling
Animals & plants
Winds
Water temperature

10. El Niño
Upwelling
Animals & plants
Winds
Water temperature

11. The Impact of El Niño A global connection
Normal Winter El Nino Winter

12. The El Niño years A weak, warm current
annually around Christmas time along the coast of Ecuador and Peru and lasting only a few weeks
Every three to seven years, an El Niño event may last for many months,
During the past forty years, ten of these major El Niño events have been recorded,
the worst of which occurred in
was the strongest.
Some of the El Niño events have persisted more than one year.

13. La Niña
La Niña (female child) refers to an anomaly of unusually cold sea surface temperatures found in the eastern tropical Pacific. La Niña occurs roughly half as often as El Niño.

14. Global Ocean Currents (Surface)

15. Conveyor Belt A vast ocean current system (Deep water)
Transports heat and moisture around the Planet
Conveyor is delicately balanced
Has shut down or
changed direction
many times in Earth's history

16. Ocean conveyor belt Driven by salt and temperature differences
Sea ice is made
of fresh water -
It leaves salt behind
Salty water is
Heavier so it sinks.
What happens if there
Is less sea ice?

17. Impact of Conveyor changes
Winter temperatures in the North Atlantic region would fall by 20 or more degrees
Dublin would acquire the climate of Spitsbergen, 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Significant global temperature changes within decades, as well as large-scale wind shifts, dramatic fluctuations in atmospheric dust levels, glacial advances or retreats and other changes over many regions of the Earth.

18. The Day After Tomorrow! the first "climate disaster movie"
Can it really happen?

19. Abrupt Climate Change “Abrupt climate change" describes changes
in climate that occur over the span of years to decades
Human-caused changes in climate that are
occurring over the time span of decades to centuries.

20. See the Movie but remember what you learned in Earth System Science!
Earth: It’s all connected