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Led by Alfred Wegener Simulacrum
The third theme of the World Around Us component of OCR GCSE Geography A — the planet's environmental threats: the changing climate, its evidence, causes and consequences, and the global atmospheric circulation that drives extreme weather and drought.
Led by Alfred Wegener Simulacrum
The question
How do we know the climate has changed, and what drives it? You will study the change in climate since the Quaternary (the ice ages; the medieval warming, Little Ice Age, and modern warming since 1000AD), the evidence used to reconstruct past climate (temperature data, ice cores, tree rings, paintings, diaries), and the causes — natural (solar variation, orbital change, volcanic activity) and the human enhanced greenhouse effect.
Outcome
You can describe how the climate has changed and explain why, distinguishing what the evidence shows from what causes it.
Sub-units
Led by Alfred Wegener Simulacrum
The question
What is a changing climate actually doing to the planet? You will survey the range of consequences of climate change currently being experienced across the world — physical and human, at scales from the global to the local — and learn to trace each consequence back to its mechanism.
Outcome
You can describe the current consequences of climate change, explain how they vary by place and scale, and connect each to its cause.
Sub-units
Led by Zephyrus Climate Model Simulacrum
The question
Why do the world's climatic belts lie where they do, and why is some weather so extreme? You will study how the global circulation of the atmosphere — driven by the movement of air between poles and equator — controls weather and climate, produces the world's climatic regions, and leads to extreme weather and to drought, with its impacts on people and the environment.
Outcome
You can explain the global circulation of the atmosphere and use it to account for the world's climatic regions and its extremes of weather and drought.
Sub-units