Climate Change

What Climate Change covers

Climate Change is examined in Paper 1, Living with the physical environment. It covers the evidence, causes and effects of climate change and managing climate change: mitigation and adaptation.

The 2 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• The evidence, causes and effects of climate changeThe Quaternary swings, ice cores, tree rings, pollen and historical records as evidence, orbital changes, eruptions, sunspots and human causes, and the effects on food, water, coasts and wildlife.Open →
• Managing climate change: mitigation and adaptationMitigation against adaptation, alternative energy, carbon capture and storage and its limits, planting trees, international agreements, and adapting farming, water supply and coasts to a warmer world.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Climate Change further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Mitigation vs Adaptation

  Mitigation: cutting the greenhouse gases being released so the warming is smaller. Adaptation: changing how people live so they can cope with warming already under way.

• Eccentricity vs Precession

  Eccentricity: the stretching of the orbit from nearly circular to elliptical. Precession: the slow wobble of the Earth's axis.

• Glacial period vs Interglacial

  Glacial period: a long cold phase in which ice sheets grow and spread. Interglacial: a warmer phase between cold phases when the ice melts back.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   When did the Quaternary period begin, and what has happened to its climate since?

   Model answer

   It began roughly 2.6 million years ago, and the climate has swung repeatedly between cold glacial periods and warmer interglacials, the present one included.

2. 2

   How do ice cores drilled from an ice sheet reveal past temperatures?

   Model answer

   Each annual layer traps bubbles of the air of its time, so the greenhouse gas content and the oxygen isotopes in the ice give a temperature record going back hundreds of thousands of years.

3. 3

   What does the width of tree rings tell a scientist about past climate?

   Model answer

   A tree adds one ring a year and grows a wider ring in a warm, wet year, so ring widths in living and preserved timber date past conditions year by year.

4. 4

   How does pollen analysis show what the climate used to be like?

   Model answer

   Pollen grains preserved in peat and lake sediment can be identified by species, and the plants growing at that depth show whether conditions were warm or cold.

5. 5

   Which historical records are used as evidence of past weather and climate?

   Model answer

   Diaries, paintings, ships' logs and records of harvests and grape ripening describe the conditions of their day, and thermometer readings extend that record into the instrumental era.

6. 6

   What present-day physical changes are taken as evidence that the world is warming?

   Model answer

   Glaciers are retreating and leaving fresh moraine, Arctic sea ice is shrinking in extent and thickness, and mean sea level is rising as oceans warm and expand.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Climate Change revision questions

What does Climate Change cover in AQA GCSE Geography?

2 subtopics: the evidence, causes and effects of climate change and managing climate change: mitigation and adaptation. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Climate Change organised?

By the AQA 8035 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.