SRI-RTP

Afforestation: Planting of new forests on lands that historically have not contained forests.Anthropogenic: Made by people or resulting from human activities. Usually used in the context of emissions that are produced as a result of human activities.Atmospheric Lifetime: The lifetime of a greenhouse gas refers to the approximate amount of time it would take for the anthropogenic increment to an atmospheric pollutant concentration to return to its natural level (assuming emissions cease) as a result of either being converted to another chemical compound or being taken out of the atmosphere via a sink. This time depends on the pollutant’s sources and sinks as well as its reactivity.Biomass: Total dry weight of all living organisms that can be supported at each tropic level in a food chain. Also, materials that are biological in origin, including organic material (both living and dead) from above and below ground, for example, trees, crops, grasses, tree litter, roots, and animals and animal waste.Black Carbon: Operationally defined species based on measurement of light absorption and chemical reactivity and/or thermal stability; consists of soot, charcoal, and/or possible light-absorbing refractory organic matter.Carbon Cycle: All parts (reservoirs) and fluxes of carbon. The cycle is usually thought of as four main reservoirs of carbon interconnected by pathways of exchange. The reservoirs are the atmosphere, terrestrial biosphere (usually includes freshwater systems), oceans, and sediments (includes fossil fuels).Climate Change: Climate change refers to any significant change in measures of climate (such as temperature, precipitation, or wind) lasting for an extended period (decades or longer). The enhancement of the growth of plants as a result of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration.Concentration: Amount of a chemical in a particular volume or weight of air, water, soil, or other medium.Deforestation: Those practices or processes that result in the conversion of forested lands for non-forest uses. This is often cited as one of the major causes of the enhanced greenhouse effect.Ecosystem: Any natural unit or entity including living and non-living parts that interact to produce a stable system through cyclic exchange of materials.Emissions: The release of a substance (usually a gas when referring to the subject of climate change) into the atmosphere.Geosphere: The soils, sediments, and rock layers of the Earth’s crust, both continental and beneath the ocean floors.Global Warming: Global warming is an average increase in the temperature of the atmosphere near the Earth’s surface and in the troposphere, which can contribute to changes in global climate patterns.Global Warming Potential (GWP): Global Warming Potential (GWP) is defined as the cumulative radiative forcing effects of a gas over a specified time horizon resulting from the emission of a unit mass of gas relative to a reference gas.Greenhouse Gas (GHG): Any gas that absorbs infrared radiation in the atmosphere.Halocarbons: Compounds containing either chlorine, bromine or fluorine and carbon. Such compounds can act as powerful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.Ice Core: A cylindrical section of ice removed from a glacier or an ice sheet in order to study climate patterns of the past.Landfill: Land waste disposal site in which waste is generally spread in thin layers, compacted, and covered with a fresh layer of soil each day