Details

This OER is a product of The Open University that explores the topic of climate change and global warming, the greenhouse effect, the human impact on the atmosphere, including the impact of industrialization, other sources of greenhouse gases that are connected to humans and the numerous and varied means of measuring climate change that are available.
The students will be able to understand the physical basis of the natural greenhouse effect, including the meaning of the term radiative forcing, analyse the way various human activities are increasing emmissions of the natural greenhouse gases, demonstrate an awareness of the difficulties involved in the detection of any unusual global warming ‘signal’ above the ‘background noise’ of natural variability in the Eath’s climate and of attributing (in whole or in part) any such signal to human activity.

Subject Area: 1. Natural sciences – Earth and related environmental sciences

Education Level: Secondary school

Education Use: Instruction/curriculum, Assessment, Informal education

Language: EN

Publisher/Institution: OpenLearn is a free learning platform, delivered by The Open University as part of its Royal Charter commitment to support the wellbeing of the community. 

License type: Creative Commons-Attribution (CC BY)

Primary User: Teacher

Learning resource type (IEEE LOM): Presentation

Technical type (IEEE LOM): Text – Hypertext

Time to read: 30min

Learning outcomes:

• Have a general understanding of Carbon Footprint
• Have a general understanding of Energy Efficiency
• Have a general understanding of Sustainability

DigComp competence area: 1. Information and data literacy – 1.1 Browsing, searching and filtering data, information and digital content

DigComp proficiency level: 4.Tasks, and well defined and non-routine problems

Link: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/nature-environment/climate-change/content-section-0?intro=1

Key words: environmental indicators, impact of industrialisation, the greenhouse effect