Ramandeep+M.


 * TOPIC:** Describe how natural phenomena can affect climate (eg. Biosphere processes, volcanic eruptions, Coriolis effect, El Nino and La Nina)



Plants, animals, and other living things have quite a big role in effecting the climate. Some of these living things can produce greenhouse gases, trapping heat from solar radiation and helping global warming, while others reduce greenhouse gases through the atmosphere. A couple of examples are plants and wildfires. Plants take out a lot of the carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere to make their own food by photosynthesis. Wildfires also help in reducing global warming, just not in the same way as plants. When a wildfire happens, a lot of smoke and carbon dioxide is released, but if the forest grows again to a size similar to the one before, it can take out the same amount of carbon dioxide that it released previously.
 * Living Things **



Earth has had many volcanic eruptions in previous times, and even does in present times. A lot of these eruptions are small, but there have been some that made a big enough impact on Earth's climate. Like when Mount Pinatubo erupted (in the Philippines), devastating volcanic eruptions with a higher magnitude can affect our climate by blocking solar radiation that is trying to reach the Earth's surface. It can also lower the temperature in the layer of atmosphere we live in, the troposphere, and change the atmospheric circulation patterns.
 * Volcanic Eruptions **

= = El Nino and La Nina are two different stages of what meteorologists call the Southern Oscillation. El nino, in Spanish, means little boy while La Nina means little girl. These two stages are the cause of a lot of changes in temperature and yearly climate changes. El Nino happens about every seven years and has hugely affected places all over the globe, although for the last 20-30 years, it has become quite intense. When El Nino happens, the ocean temperatures increase immensely around South America, changing weather patterns in the Pacific that can cause floods and droughts in places as far as Africa and India. A lot of rainfall is caused in the northern hemisphere, as well as low atmospheric pressure because of the unusually warmer weather. A catastrophic event that occured because of El Nino is was the flooding from Ecuador to the Gulf of Mexico. La Nina, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of El Nino. This phase occurs after El Nino and has drier air, higher air pressure, and unusually cooler temperatures in the ocean. Ocean currents pick up nutrients and provides food for organisms in the ocean rather than famine and makes winds blow away humidity and clouds from the air. So overall, El Nino changes the climate by increasing the temperatures of the ocean while La Nina decreases them.
 * El Nino and La Nina **

__** Bibliography **__
 * http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Volcano/
 * http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/cli_biosphere.html
 * http://roble.pntic.mec.es/rmac0040/plants.html
 * http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/SOLAR/learning-aerosol.html
 * http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/issues/climatechange/elnino.asp
 * http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/elninolanina.htm