Explain the difference between the concepts of weather and climate.
Name three physical factors that can contribute to fluctuations in climate and could have played a role in the development of the Ice Ages.
What types of environmental indicators are used to reconstruct past climates?
What kind of historical and archaeological data can be used to reconstruct past climates? Why is the interpretation of some of this data difficult?
Explain why humans were able to cross over from Asia into North America through the Bering Straight about 18,000 years ago? (Be complete in your answer).
What kind of climatic changes in Northern Africa prompted the migration of human populations away from that region? How are these changes believed to have fostered the development of ancient civilizations?
Below are two graphs of global mean temperatures during the past 18,000 and 1,000 years, respectively. Please identify on these graphs the time periods corresponding to: a) the Climatic Optimum or Holocene maximum; b) the Medieval warm period; c) the Little Ice Age; and d) the Younger Dryas event.
What were some of the consequences of the Little Ice Age to human populations in Northern Europe and the Southwestern United States?
Give specific examples in which climate fluctuations can affect human affairs in two of the following four areas: a) agriculture, b) forestry, c) communications, and d) human health.
Give two reasons why air temperatures are usually higher in large cities than in the surrounding countryside.
Do scientists believe that agricultural practices along the Mississippi River contributed to the 1993 Flood? Why?
Last week and part of this week a very important international conference is being held in Kyoto, Japan. What is this conference about? What is the proposal the United States submitted to that conference?