What Processes Govern Climate Change?

What processes govern climate change?

Introduction

‘Origin and Evolution of Earth: Research Questions for a Changing Planet’ is an academic report accomplished by The Committee on Grand Research Questions in the Solid-Earth Sciences and in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. In the report, ten research questions about the origins of the Earth and life, Earth’ s interior, the climate and interactions between the earth and the habitants on it, the hazards and resources on the earth have been generated. This report was published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 and aimed to explore these grand Earth science questions and capture the essential scientific issues that constitute the frontier of Earth science at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

In this report, the ten research questions have been divided into four chapters, including ‘Origins’, ‘Earth’s Interior’, ‘A Habitable Planet’ and ‘Hazards and Resources’. In the first chapter ‘Origins’, the three questions discussing the origins of Earth and other planets, the Earth’s ‘dark age’ and the origin of life are involved. The second chapter ‘Earth’s Interior’ consists of the three questions illustrating how the Earth’s interior works and affects its surface, why the plate tectonics and continents exist and how Earth processes are controlled by the material properties. In the third chapter, ‘A Habitable Planet’, the two questions aim to reveal the factors that cause climate to change and to what extent it can change, as well as how life and Earth shaped each other. In the fourth chapter ‘Hazards and resources’, knowledge about the prediction of natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruption and their consequences have been imparted and the final question expounded how fluid flow and transport affect the human environment. The specific question ‘What processes govern climate change?’ in Question 7 ‘What causes climate to change-and how much can it change?’ has been chosen as the research question in the next three years for its close relation with the phenomenon ‘global warming’, which is believed to be largely caused by human activities.

This essay would summarize the research questions in the report in the first part and then explain why the question ‘What processes govern climate change?’ was chosen as the research topic of the work in the next three years.

Summary of the research questions in Origin and Evolution of Earth: Research Questions for a Changing Planet (DePaolo et al., 2008).

• Origins

• HOW DID EARTH AND OTHER PLANETS FORM?

Apart from the sun, which is formed by the ‘gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud core’ (DePaolo et al., 2008, p.8), other planets in the solar system are divided into two types: inner planets and outer planets. The process of outer planets formation involves two major stages, the condensation of rocky and icy materials and the accumulation of gas from circumstellar disk. The process of inner planets is found to be even more complicated, involving the gradually accelerating aggregations of small objects and then a much longer procedure to further evolve. After this long process of evolution, collisions will start to occur until the planet is independent enough to prevent more collisions. At the start, Earth was thought to be once similar with the other objects in the solar system. However, after the Mars-sized planet collided with it, the condition on Earth has been greatly changed, which could help to explain the special environment on Earth and the origin of water.