Universe and global climate — Intermediate

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Level 2: Intermediate

Explain, apply, analyse, sequence — connect ideas, read patterns, use rules in new contexts (bridge to Year 11).

1. Place these in order from earliest to latest in the usual Big Bang picture: (a) very hot, dense early universe; (b) expansion and overall cooling; (c) cosmic microwave background as cooled relic radiation.

   A)(b) → (a) → (c)B)(a) → (b) → (c)C)(c) → (b) → (a)D)(a), (b), and (c) all occur at the same instant

2. Why does melting polar ice tend to create a positive feedback for warming?

   A)Open water always evaporates enough to cancel any albedo loss completelyB)Ice and open ocean have nearly the same albedo at high latitudes in summerC)Bright ice reflects more sunlight than darker ocean; less ice can mean more absorption and warmingD)The loop is negative because meltwater is always colder than the ice it replaced

3. Energy transfer between atmosphere and ocean matters for climate because:

   A)Latent heat links them, yet oceans shed stored heat to space within a few days onlyB)Continental crust, not ocean water, holds most climate-relevant heat storageC)Wind-driven currents ignore surface wind stress, evaporation, and momentum exchangeD)Oceans store and transport vast heat; winds, moisture flux, and currents tightly couple both

4. Redshift shows spectral lines at longer wavelengths than the same lines from a lab source. For distant galaxies this is usually interpreted as:

   A)Cosmic expansion stretching wavelengths while light crosses expanding spaceB)Pure Doppler motion through static space only, with expansion playing no roleC)Gravitational redshift from Earth’s mass dominating extragalactic line shiftsD)Instrument drift that happens to mimic the same trend in every distant galaxy

5. The biosphere influences energy and carbon in climate models mainly through processes such as:

   A)Blocking sunlight completely before it reaches the ocean mixed layerB)Photosynthesis, respiration, and carbon stored in living matter and soilsC)Removing all water vapour from the lower troposphere year-roundD)Locking all carbon permanently underground in fossil fuels with no exchange

6. Natural variability in climate (e.g. volcanoes, solar cycles) is often distinguished from long-term forced change using:

   A)One very long proxy record alone, with no check against physics-based expectationsB)Only the most recent decade of satellite data, ignoring earlier instrumentsC)Multiple lines of evidence, long records, greenhouse-gas physics, and models togetherD)Milankovitch cycles alone as the full explanation for every multi-decadal trend

7. Why is water vapour often treated differently from CO₂ when summarising long-lived warming drivers?

   A)Water vapour responds quickly as a feedback; CO₂ is emitted independently and stays elevated longerB)Water vapour is dropped from greenhouse-gas lists because it is infrared-inactiveC)CO₂ is assumed unable to absorb infrared compared with nitrogen or oxygenD)Water vapour is fixed in space and time, unrelated to warming or cooling

8. Milankovitch cycles relate mainly to:

   A)Daily tides driven mainly by the Moon and Sun’s gravity on oceansB)Slow changes in Earth’s orbit and tilt that redistribute incoming solar energy over millenniaC)Formation of the first light elements minutes after the Big Bang, not Earth’s climateD)ENSO events only, on seasonal-to-yearly time scales in the Pacific

9. Sea-level rise from warming ice sheets and thermal expansion illustrates:

   A)Astronomical expansion of space between galaxies felt directly at every beachB)A change that never affects coasts or human infrastructure in practiceC)A hydrosphere disconnected from atmosphere, cryosphere, and geosphereD)Linked responses across energy gain, ice, water masses, and coasts

10. Compared with weather, climate is best described as:

    A)The same idea as one storm event, since the words mean the same in practiceB)Synonymous with tomorrow’s peak temperature at a single weather stationC)Long-term patterns and statistics of the atmosphere and closely linked Earth systemsD)Fundamentally unmeasurable, so averages and trends cannot be summarised

11. Burning fossil fuels adds CO₂ faster than natural sinks remove it on human time scales mainly because:

    A)Ancient buried carbon re-enters the fast surface cycle over decades to centuriesB)Photosynthesis and soils remove the full annual fossil CO₂ pulse within weeksC)Seawater cannot dissolve measurable CO₂, so the ocean sink is negligibleD)Coal, oil, and gas are treated as carbon-free in carbon-budget accounting

12. Ice cores trap tiny samples of past atmospheres. Alongside modern air measurements they are useful because they:

    A)Replace thermometers entirely once a single core is drilled successfullyB)Extend greenhouse-gas and temperature context before widespread instruments and cross-check storiesC)Resolve rainfall for one farm only, with no wider climatic meaningD)Resist calibration, so scientists cannot compare them with modern data fairly

13. Evaporation from ocean to atmosphere matters for Earth’s energy budget partly because:

    A)It transfers negligible energy compared with dry conduction through rock aloneB)It removes latent heat from the air and always cools the ocean without moisture transportC)It moves large amounts of latent heat, linking hydrosphere and atmosphere on many scalesD)It only redistributes salt, leaving radiation budgets and heat storage unchanged

14. Carbonate shells and coral reefs are sensitive to ocean acidification mainly because:

    A)Falling pH shifts carbonate chemistry, making CaCO₃ skeletons harder to maintainB)Strong acids strip all dissolved salts from seawater within a few seasonsC)Calcifiers need pure CO₂ bubbles and fail when any bicarbonate is presentD)Seawater pH is unrelated to acid–base or carbonate equilibrium processes

15. Compared with pre-industrial eras, radiative forcing from well-mixed greenhouse gases is often described as positive in summaries because:

    A)They net-cool the surface immediately, reversing the greenhouse effect entirelyB)Stratospheric ozone blocks all outgoing infrared before it can leave EarthC)Water vapour is held constant in every model layer, so gases cannot interactD)They trap more outgoing infrared, shifting the energy budget toward warming unless offset

16. A stratospheric ozone layer supports life partly because it absorbs much:

    A)Outgoing infrared only, which is why the surface cools when ozone is highB)Essentially all visible sunlight, plunging ecosystems into permanent nightC)Biologically hazardous ultraviolet before intense levels reach the surfaceD)Household microwave frequencies that would otherwise boil surface seawater

17. Thermohaline circulation refers broadly to deep overturning driven partly by:

    A)Contrasts in temperature and salinity that change seawater densityB)Lunar phase cycles alone, without heat or salt fluxes at the sea surfaceC)Runoff from a single river, ignoring global buoyancy forcingD)Cosmic-ray showers that change deep water colour instead of density

18. CH₄ is a strong greenhouse gas per molecule in many comparisons, yet CO₂ dominates long-term forcing in many summaries because:

    A)CH₄ lacks infrared bands, so per-molecule potency is a measurement artefactB)CH₄ is shorter-lived and less abundant overall; fossil CO₂ builds in the air for centuriesC)CO₂ is transparent to infrared compared with nitrogen, explaining the differenceD)Volcanoes are the sole modern CH₄ source, while CO₂ comes only from plants

19. Urban areas can be warmer than nearby rural sites partly due to:

    A)Systematically lower urban greenhouse-gas concentrations than surrounding farmsB)Persistent deep snowpack over pavement that reflects summer heat downwardC)Lack of concrete and asphalt, which would otherwise shade vegetated lotsD)Heat-storing materials, waste heat, and reduced evapotranspiration

20. Aerosols from pollution or large volcanic eruptions can cool climate temporarily partly by:

    A)Boosting well-mixed CO₂ enough to dominate over any scattering effectB)Destroying the entire ozone column so no UV reaches the troposphereC)Scattering incoming sunlight and interacting with cloud microphysicsD)Warming only the stratosphere while leaving surface radiation budgets untouched

21. After a major volcanic eruption, a few cool years can still sit inside a multi-decadal warming trend because:

    A)One cool season erases greenhouse-gas physics in the atmosphere completelyB)Short-lived forcings and internal variability overlay longer-term drivers seen in many recordsC)Volcanoes add CO₂ so fast that they always override any human influenceD)Instrument networks are designed to ignore volcanic years in every published average

22. Positive feedback in climate means:

    A)The climate system snaps back to its old mean within hours of any perturbationB)Each response opposes the initial forcing, guaranteeing stable temperaturesC)A warming trigger can strengthen through linked processes that add further warmingD)Feedback loops scrub the atmosphere of greenhouse gases down to zero

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