Factors of Climate
METEORITE & ASTEROID IMPACTS
What does it control?
What are the effects when it changes?
Can Humans alter this factor or process? If so, how?
- 🔺TEMPERATURE – COOLING
- Impacts release large amounts of dust, could alter spin of the earth
- They release huge quantities of vaporized material into the atmosphere, which blocks the sun.
- They also cause shock waves for hundreds of miles and produce fire storms for thousands of miles. Meteors also cause acid rain globally.
What are the effects when it changes?
- Increase of dust in the atmosphere creates more clouds = cooling effect
- Freezing = lowers sea levels
- Living Organisms -alter living conditions
- Ocean currents upwelling, drought or flooding
- Surface albedo- could change making more dark or light surfaces--leads to more or less heat
- In the past, a large asteroid has been blamed for the extinction of certain creatures. About 65 million years ago, a huge asteroid hit the Earth causing the extinction of all the dinosaurs and putting the earth into an Ice age. There are fossil records to back this up.
The Earth’s atmosphere protects us from meteors and comets, by vaporizing all or most of the incoming material before reaching the Earth’s surface.
Can Humans alter this factor or process? If so, how?
- NO-Humans cannot change frequency or type of meteorite impacts
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