Lesson Y8-U05-L02

Y8-U05-L02 The Climate Has Always Changed: Natural Causes Quiz: KS3 Geography, Unit 11

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson Y8-U05-L02, The Climate Has Always Changed: Natural Causes: 20 multiple choice questions for the KS3 Geography (National Curriculum), Unit 11: Year 8: Climate Change: Evidence and Choices, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. What is proxy data?

    • A thermometer that records temperature every second of the day, and is kept in a school hall
    • A measure of rainfall in millimetres collected each month
    • Natural evidence used to measure past climate before thermometers existed
    • A type of cloud that forms at high altitude over mountains

  2. What do wide tree rings usually suggest about the year they formed?

    • A year with no rain at all in the region
    • A cold, dry year
    • A warm, wet year
    • The year the tree was planted by a farmer

  3. What is trapped in the layers of an ice core?

    • Rocks from the sea floor, dropped by ancient rivers
    • Fish skeletons from rivers that dried up long ago
    • Tiny bubbles of old air
    • Plastic from factories, carried by winds across the ocean

  4. How do scientists work out the age of layers in an ice core?

    • By weighing the ice every year and comparing the totals
    • By asking local people to remember the weather from the past
    • By counting the annual layers, like tree rings
    • By measuring the length of the core only, with a ruler

  5. What is a glacial period?

    • A tall mountain range in Asia with snow on its peaks
    • A hot summer in a desert with no rain for many months
    • A dry river bed during a drought in a long hot season
    • A very cold ice age when ice sheets grew larger

  6. What is an interglacial?

    • A cold ocean current near the Equator that cools the sea
    • A warmer time between ice ages, like the climate we live in now
    • A sudden volcanic eruption that throws ash across the sky
    • A long period of heavy snow every winter across the whole land and the sea

  7. Roughly how long have thermometer records existed across the world?

    • About 150 years
    • About 150,000 years
    • About 1,500 years
    • About 15,000 years

  8. What can a very large volcanic eruption do to the climate for a few years?

    • Extra sunshine reaching the ground
    • Ash and gases blocking sunlight
    • Faster tree growth in forests
    • More cars on the roads

  9. Which of these is a natural cause of long-term climate change?

    • Planting trees in cities
    • Shifts in Earth's orbit
    • Building new motorways
    • Burning fossil fuels in factories

  10. About how many years does one long cycle of change in the shape of Earth's orbit take?

    • About 1,000 years
    • About 100,000 years
    • About 10 years
    • About 1 million years

  11. What is the name for a long cold period when huge ice sheets covered large parts of the northern continents?

    • A monsoon
    • An ice age
    • A drought
    • A heatwave

  12. Which natural cause changes how much sunlight reaches Earth over long periods?

    • Cutting down of forests for timber and farmland each year
    • Changes in Earth's orbit and tilt
    • Burning of coal in cities that produces smoke and fumes
    • Building of dams on rivers to make electricity for towns

  13. How can a large volcanic eruption cool the Earth for a few years?

    • Its lava freezes the oceans and cools the air across the globe
    • Its smoke pulls heat from the air into space above the clouds
    • Its ash blocks some sunlight from reaching the ground
    • Its steam makes the sea colder for many years afterwards

  14. Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991. By about how much did it cool global temperatures for about a year?

    • About 0.005 Celsius
    • About 5 Celsius
    • About 50 Celsius
    • About 0.5 Celsius

  15. Tree rings and ice cores both show a cold period. What does this suggest?

    • The cold period is a mistake from one proxy, which should be ignored
    • The evidence is more reliable because two different proxies agree
    • The cold period happened in only one country, not across the world
    • Trees and ice cores cannot record climate at all in any region

  16. Which evidence can show past levels of carbon dioxide?

    • The colour of a lake in summer when the water is warm
    • The width of a tree ring from a single year of growth
    • The shape of a mountain range over a long period
    • Air bubbles trapped in an ice core

  17. Long before humans burned fuel, what caused the swings between glacial and interglacial periods?

    • Factories releasing smoke into the sky over the big cities, which began long before humans burned any fuel
    • Changes in the amount of sunlight from Earth's orbit and tilt
    • Farmers cutting down forests to make space for new fields
    • Cars driving on busy roads and motorways every single day

  18. An ice-core bubble from 120,000 years ago shows lower carbon dioxide during the last ice age. What does this tell us?

    • Carbon dioxide levels were lower during that cold period
    • Carbon dioxide has never changed over time in the whole record
    • The bubble was formed by a volcano erupting nearby at the time
    • Carbon dioxide was higher during the ice age than it is today

  19. What usually happens to ice sheets when global temperatures rise?

    • They grow thicker and spread out
    • They shrink and melt
    • They turn into rain clouds
    • They stop moving entirely

  20. Which statement best judges the reliability of proxy evidence?

    • Proxies are only useful for the last 100 years of the record
    • One proxy is always wrong and should be ignored in every study, however carefully it was collected
    • Several proxies agreeing make the conclusion more reliable than one alone
    • Proxies cannot tell scientists anything about the past at all

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