Environmental Threats to Our Planet | OCR GCSE Geography A (J383)
Environmental Threats to Our Planet
- 88 questions
- 8 subtopics
- Component 02
- Component 02
Environmental Threats to Our Planet is examined in Component 02, The World Around Us.
It covers climate change through the Quaternary, and since 1000AD, the evidence for climate change, natural causes of climate change, and the enhanced greenhouse effect, the consequences of climate change, the world’s climatic regions and global atmospheric circulation, how global circulation produces extreme weather, tropical storms: causes, distribution and frequency and A drought caused by El Niño or La Niña.
Sample questions from Environmental Threats to Our Planet
Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.
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Climate change through the Quaternary, and since 1000AD
What is meant by an interglacial?
Show the answer
A warmer phase between two glacials, usually only ten to fifteen thousand years long, when the ice retreated. -
The evidence for climate change
How do tree rings record past climate?
Show the answer
A tree adds one ring a year, and the ring is wide in a warm wet year and narrow in a cold or dry one. -
Natural causes of climate change, and the enhanced greenhouse effect
How does a large volcanic eruption cool the climate?
Show the answer
Ash and sulfur dioxide blasted into the upper atmosphere reflect incoming sunlight back to space, so temperatures fall for a year or two. -
The consequences of climate change
Why does the loss of ice speed up warming still further?
Show the answer
Bright ice reflects sunlight away, but the dark ocean and ground beneath it absorb that energy, so the surface warms faster. -
The world’s climatic regions and global atmospheric circulation
Which climate type covers the mid-latitudes, and what are its seasons like?
Show the answer
The temperate climate, roughly 40° to 60° north and south, with warm summers, cool winters and rainfall spread through the whole year. -
How global circulation produces extreme weather
How does the rotation of the Earth change the direction of surface winds?
Show the answer
It deflects them to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern, so they curve rather than blowing straight towards low pressure. -
Tropical storms: causes, distribution and frequency
Why does a tropical storm weaken once it crosses the coast?
Show the answer
It is cut off from the warm ocean water that supplied its heat and moisture, and friction with the land slows its winds. -
A drought caused by El Niño or La Niña
How often do El Niño and La Niña events happen?
Show the answer
Irregularly, every few years, and each event usually lasts about a year before conditions return to normal.
The 8 subtopics
One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.
| Subtopic | What it covers | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Climate change through the Quaternary, and since 1000AD | When the Quaternary began, its swings between glacial and interglacial phases, the interglacial we live in now, why sea level fell in each ice age, the medieval warming, the Little Ice Age and modern warming in order, and how modern warming differs from earlier changes. | 11 |
| The evidence for climate change | Measured global temperature records, how ice cores and tree rings reveal past climate, dendrochronology and its limits, paintings, diaries and other written records as evidence, why they are less reliable than measurements, and why scientists combine several kinds of evidence. | 10 |
| Natural causes of climate change, and the enhanced greenhouse effect | Sunspots, the Milankovitch cycles of eccentricity, obliquity and precession, how volcanic eruptions cool the climate for a short time, why natural causes cannot explain recent warming, the greenhouse and enhanced greenhouse effects, and the carbon released by fossil fuels, farming and deforestation. | 11 |
| The consequences of climate change | Rising sea level from thermal expansion and meltwater and the places it threatens, shrinking Arctic sea ice and how ice loss speeds warming, coral bleaching, more extreme weather, threats to food supply, ocean acidification, species moving towards the poles, and climate refugees. | 10 |
| The world’s climatic regions and global atmospheric circulation | Where the equatorial, hot desert, savanna, temperate and polar climates are found and what each is like, why the equator receives more solar energy than the poles, what global circulation achieves, the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells, and the rising and sinking air of the Hadley cell. | 10 |
| How global circulation produces extreme weather | Why land near the equator is so wet and land near 30° so dry, the trade winds, how the Earth's rotation deflects surface winds, why the polar regions are dry, the jet stream and the extremes it brings, the seasonal shift of the rain belt, and changeable mid-latitude weather. | 10 |
| Tropical storms: causes, distribution and frequency | The sea conditions and latitudes tropical storms need, how a storm builds and why it weakens over land, the eye, where storms are concentrated, and the causes, distribution and changing pattern of drought. | 10 |
| A drought caused by El Niño or La Niña | Normal conditions across the tropical Pacific, El Niño and La Niña and the regions each turns dry, how often they occur, how a shift in warm water leads to drought, a drought's effects on people and the environment, short-term responses and long-term adaptation, and Ethiopia's 2015–16 drought and its Productive Safety Net Programme. | 16 |
How the guide is worked
Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.
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Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
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Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
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Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.
Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.
Nearby topics
OCR GCSE Geography A Active Recall Guide
Every topic, not just this one. 749 questions with their answers.