Climate Change Study Guide: 92 Flashcards on Causes, Effects & Mitigation, from Carbon Budgets to Tipping Points

Climate change is a topic where the numbers matter: 1.5°C, 2.8°C, 900 gigatonnes, 90%. The Flip It deck AL8259 "Climate Change: Causes, Effects & Mitigation" gives you 92 cards built from the current scientific consensus, and it rewards a study plan that is organised around those figures.

How the deck is built

• Cards 1-36, causes and evidence: greenhouse gases, the carbon budget, albedo, aerosols, global dimming, polar amplification, paleoclimate.
• Cards 37-43, impacts: coral bleaching, extinction risk, health, climate migration, climate justice.
• Cards 44-58, mitigation: net zero, NDCs, clean energy, carbon removal, carbon farming, fossil fuel subsidies.
• Cards 59-92, a glossary tail that revisits the earlier topics as definitions.

Terms you'll lock in: greenhouse effect, radiative forcing, climate sensitivity, climate feedbacks, carbon cycle, carbon sink, permafrost, tipping points, thermohaline circulation, AMOC, Southern Ocean Overturning Circulation, El Niño, La Niña, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, CMIP6, Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, Last Interglacial, Last Glacial Maximum, climate proxies, ice cores, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, ocean acidification, thermal expansion, desertification, adaptation vs mitigation, climate resilience.

Key cards

Suspend the duplicates

The glossary tail repeats the first half: polar amplification (cards 23 and 76), ocean heat (25 and 74), Atlantic circulation (36 and 88), proxies (32 and 90), the 2.8°C pledge gap (15 and 55) and adaptation (45 and 91). Keep the earlier version, which usually carries the number, and suspend the later one. That trims the deck to about 85 cards without losing a fact.

Update three cards

• Card 71 gives the WMO outlook for 2024-2028 (almost 50% chance the five-year mean exceeds 1.5°C). The 2025 WMO update raised that to about 70% for 2025-2029. Rewrite the card with the year of the source.
• Card 78 lists CFCs as the example of fluorinated gases. CFCs are phased out under the Montreal Protocol; the F-gases counted in emissions today are mainly HFCs, PFCs, SF₆ and NF₃.
• Card 14 uses the Copernicus figure (+1.60°C); WMO's consolidated value for 2024 is about 1.55°C. Note both so a quiz does not catch you out.

One gap to fill

The deck gives cards to CO₂, methane, F-gases and tropospheric ozone but never mentions nitrous oxide, the third-largest long-lived greenhouse gas (mainly from fertilised soils, with a lifetime of over 100 years). Write that card yourself.

A study tip that fits this topic

Make a number ladder: one card per threshold, ordered from past to future (Last Glacial Maximum -6°C, pre-industrial 0, today ~1.5°C, Paris "well under 2°C", pledges 2.8°C, very high emissions up to 5.7°C). Reviewing the ladder top to bottom turns scattered figures into one scale you can reason with.

To connect climate with the rest of environmental science, continue with ecosystems, the water cycle and pollution and conservation and sustainability.

Open deck AL8259 on Flip It and start with the causes block.