Checks

Airy-fairy questions

1. What are the gases that compose air, and in what proportions are they contained in air?
2. Describe the course of the oxygen we breathe, from the atmosphere to the inside of the body.
3. What forces allow the Earth’s atmosphere to exist?
4. What is the vertical temperature gradient of the atmosphere and how does it change?
5. What and how many are the layers that compose the atmosphere? Describe the characteristics of the atmospheres of the planets closest to the Earth, in particular how they influence their climates.
6. Give a definition of climate, specifying in particular what are in your opinion the distinctions between the main types of terrestrial climates.
7. What are the geographical factors that determine the different types of terrestrial climate?
8. Make a list of the main effects of the climatic changes, and suggest some of the consequences they may have on man.
9. Part of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth is used to make water evaporate from rivers, lakes and seas. Describe, through the symbolic journey of a sunray, how much solar energy is used up in the process.
10. Could you describe why a car, locked and exposed to the sun, is so hot inside, much hotter than outside?
11. There is a "good" and a "bad" ozone. Describe where each one of them is, and explain why their functions differ so much.
12. Explain what the ozone hole is and why its widening is such a great worry to the scientific community.
13. What products of human activity are harmful to the ozone layer, and what type of harmful gases do they release into the atmosphere?
14. By how much do scientists expect the temperature to increase over the next 100 years?
15. By how much has the mean yearly global temperature increased between 1950 and 2000?
16. In what proportion do methane and carbon dioxide contribute to the Earth’s heating?
17. What is the essential difference between the pollutants that take effect on a local scale and those that take effect on a global scale?
18. What is the polluting gas whose effects on the atmosphere are heaviest?
19. With reference to the text and the matching picture in the ‘air’ resource, describe the way acid rains are formed and the environments they damage.
20. What gases are involved in the production of photochemical smog?
21. By how many ppm has the air concentration of carbon dioxide increased between 1940 and 2000?
22. Choose one greenhouse gas; list what areas of human activity produce the highest amounts of such gas and how it contributes to the Earth’s heating.
23. Write methane concentrations in the early twentieth century and today. Also think what factors could have caused such a variation.
24. What means are used to monitor atmospheric pollution?
25. How can radioactive pollution be harmful to man’s life?
26. What measures have been taken by international communities over the last few years to protect the environment?
27. List the attitudes and measures that any human being should take to reduce atmospheric pollution, then compare notes with your friends.