ENVS 101: Climate Change and Canada's Response Assignment

This assignment delves into the intricacies of climate change, beginning with an examination of Earth's energy budget and the roles of land, water, oceans, and the atmosphere. It identifies the three most impactful greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—detailing their sources, global warming potentials, and contributions to the warming effect. The assignment then explores the human impact on the carbon cycle, highlighting how human activities have altered the carbon cycle and contributed to climate change. Furthermore, it investigates positive feedback loops within the environment, specifically focusing on the impact of the cryosphere and polar amplification, and the potential for emerging diseases from thawing permafrost. The assignment concludes with an analysis of climate change impacts on Canada, addressing factors related to water, agriculture/forestry, human health, urbanization, and northern community development.

Running head: ENVIRONMENT 1
ENVIRONMENT

ENVIRONMENT
Table of Contents
Part A: Greenhouse Gases and Earth’s Energy Budget...............................................................................3
Question 1...................................................................................................................................................3
Land and Albedo.....................................................................................................................................3
Water.......................................................................................................................................................3
Oceans.....................................................................................................................................................3
Atmosphere.............................................................................................................................................3
Question 2...................................................................................................................................................4
Question 3...................................................................................................................................................5
Part b: The Cryosphere and Polar Amplification.........................................................................................5
Question 4...................................................................................................................................................5
Question 5...................................................................................................................................................6
PART C: Climate Change and Canada's Response......................................................................................6
Question 6...............................................................................................................................................6
A) Water...............................................................................................................................................6
B) Agriculture or forestry.....................................................................................................................7
C) Human health...................................................................................................................................7
D) Urbanization....................................................................................................................................7
E) Northern community development......................................................................................................7
References...................................................................................................................................................8

ENVIRONMENT
Part A: Greenhouse Gases and Earth’s Energy Budget
Question 1
Land and Albedo
Land plays a vital role as it is a solid part of the earth. Land since the inception of the pre-
industrial period, the surface of land’s temperature has reached nearly twice as much as global
average temperature. Albedo affects the climate by determining how much radiation a plant can
absorb. It can be observed that increase in the frequency, has adversely affected the climate
(Barth-Cohen, Greenberg & Moretz, 2018). The land affects the most, as the heat reaches the
land, the surface tends to get hot and high temperature is harmful not only for humans but also
for animals as well. Since the earth’s climate is based on the incoming and outgoing of energy
and hence land affects the climate to a higher level and vice versa.
Water
Water is a primary medium that can affect the climatic conditions. Climate change
directly affects water security and conflicts as climate changes, floods, droughts, melting
glaciers, storms often occur with severe consequences. Higher temperatures and progressively
extraordinary, less unsurprising, climate conditions are anticipated to influence accessibility and
appropriation of precipitation, snowmelt, stream streams and groundwater, and further break
down water quality (Loeb, et al 2018).
Oceans
The seas spread around 70 percent of the Earth's surface. They hence assume a significant
job in the Earth's atmosphere and in an unnatural weather change. One significant capacity of the

ENVIRONMENT
seas is to move heat from the tropics to higher scopes. They react gradually to changes in the air.
Adjacent to warm, they take up a lot of the carbon dioxide transmitted by mankind.
Atmosphere
The environment forestalls the unexpected increment in temperature during the sunshine
hours. Furthermore, during the night, it hinders the break of warmth into space and the climate
keeps the normal temperature of the earth genuinely consistent during the day and in any event,
over the span of the entire years. So in this way the climate has been affected by the atmosphere
as well (Lenka,, et al 2017).
Question 2
The three major gases that are contributing to the global warming are Carbon dioxide
(CO2), methane (CH4) and Nitrous Oxide (N2O). Majorly carbon dioxide travels to the
atmosphere when activities like burning of fossil fuels which can be further bifurcated to as oil,
coal and natural gas, trees, biological materials and waste of solid nature, are performed. It also
makes up for 0.041% of Earth’s atmosphere. On the other hand methane enters when coal is
transported from one place to another and it also falls for livestock, by decomposing the
agricultural waste in waste landfills. Nitrous oxide is emitted when the combustion of fossil fuels
occurs. This gas is so harmful that it also becomes the most dangerous gas amongst the all three
gases. About 40% of the activities are performed by human activities. It is present for 114 years
in the atmosphere (Peings, et al 2018).
There are two graphs below which define the contribution of C02 in the atmosphere and
Canada ranks second highest after US in emitting CO2 gas.

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The nitrous oxide forms 5.3%, but its impact is even longer than Carbon di oxide which holds
the maximum share in case of Canada’s atmosphere.
Question 3
The human assembly of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus from the Earth's outside layer and air
into nature has expanded 36, 9, and multiple times, separately, contrasted with topographical
sources over pre-modern occasions. Petroleum derivative consuming, land-spread change,
concrete creation, and the extraction and creation of compost to help farming are significant
reasons for these increments. Three positive feedbacks where positive environment feedback is
resulting in more carbon di-oxide are seas as extraordinary Carbon Sink. The carbon is utilized

ENVIRONMENT
by the life form (fauna and vegetation both) for its development. At the point when they vanish,
they discharge a lot of C02 in sea. The second is melting ice where more energy of the sun is
absorbed and hence results in production of more CO2 and lastly changes to ocean evaporation
which could result in releasing of more heat (Mudryk, et al 2017).
Part b: The Cryosphere and Polar Amplification
Question 4
Cryosphere is one of the most important information tools with regards to the variability in the
climate and it displays the information regarding change in the climate and its possible causes.
After the in-depth research it can be seen that the amount of ice from Cryosphere tends to reduce
and they are melting which ultimately results in multiplier effects. Cryosphere also attracts,
surface energy, greenhouse gases and water fluxes. This has also contributed to rapid warming
and polar amplification as there is a lot of loss of ice covers and its whiteness reflects most of the
energy derives from Sun back into the space. Finally, it keeps on insulating the ocean from
beneath and this is a chaos created and are expected to spread even more warming (Salzmann,
2017).
Question 5
 Arctic permafrost soils will unlock several new diseases, as the locked microbes are
awakening that could potentially harm humans, when they had to face release of too
much CO2 in the atmosphere.
 Arctic Ocean Sea Ice has already led to affect the transportation and food cycle of
animals as well as humans.

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 Greenland ice sheet will result in the warmer ocean and warmer atmosphere and this
means sea levels will raise and people are also at the risk of floods, especially those
living in coastal areas (Mudryk, et al 2017).
PART C: Climate Change and Canada's Response
Question 6
A) Water
The factors that must be considered are the quality of the water, physical sanitation of
water bodies, light penetration and temperature.
B) Agriculture or forestry
Land surface,
C) Human health
Human activities related to landfills, forestation must be discussed in self-help groups
Improvement in local areas and communities, carbon footprint are also some factors
which must be given a look (Gagné, et al 2017).
D) Urbanization
The places like coastal region, the density of the population, sanitation are some of the
factors.

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E) Northern community development
For factors of development of northern region, the ice bergs, the surface areas and the
temperature that are to be vouched for.

ENVIRONMENT
References
Barth-Cohen, L., Greenberg, K., & Moretz, E. (2018). Earth’s Energy Budget. The Science
Teacher, 86(2), 20-27.
Gagné, M. È., Kirchmeier‐Young, M. C., Gillett, N. P., & Fyfe, J. C. (2017). Arctic sea ice
response to the eruptions of Agung, El Chichón, and Pinatubo. Journal of Geophysical
Research: Atmospheres, 122(15), 8071-8078.
Lenka, S., Lenka, N. K., Singh, A. B., Singh, B., & Raghuwanshi, J. (2017). Global warming
potential and greenhouse gas emission under different soil nutrient management practices
in soybean–wheat system of central India. Environmental Science and Pollution
Research, 24(5), 4603-4612.
Loeb, N. G., Thorsen, T. J., Norris, J. R., Wang, H., & Su, W. (2018). Changes in earth’s energy
budget during and after the “pause” in global warming: an observational
perspective. Climate, 6(3), 62.
Mudryk, L. R., Kushner, P. J., Derksen, C., & Thackeray, C. (2017). Snow cover response to
temperature in observational and climate model ensembles. Geophysical Research
Letters, 44(2), 919-926.
Peings, Y., Smith, D., Deser, C., & Screen, J. (2018, December). Overview of the Polar
Amplification Model Intercomparison Project (PAMIP). In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts.
Salzmann, M. (2017). The polar amplification asymmetry: role of Antarctic surface height. Earth
System Dynamics, 8(2).