Lesson Y9-U03-L08

Y9-U03-L08 The Evidence for Climate Change Quiz: KS3 Geography, Unit 15

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson Y9-U03-L08, The Evidence for Climate Change: 20 multiple choice questions for the KS3 Geography (National Curriculum), Unit 15: Year 9: Weather, Climate and a Changing Atmosphere, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. What is proxy data?

    • Indirect evidence of past climate, such as ice cores or tree rings.
    • Forecasts of climate made by computers for the next decade.
    • Opinions about the climate written by people in the media.
    • Direct thermometer readings taken from weather stations each day.

  2. Which record gives evidence of past carbon dioxide levels?

    • Rainfall totals from a school rain gauge.
    • Daily weather forecasts for London.
    • Air bubbles trapped in ice cores.
    • Satellite images of cloud cover over the sea.

  3. Why are tree rings useful as proxy evidence?

    • They change colour each time a hurricane passes nearby.
    • They show how many people lived near the tree.
    • They record the exact temperature of every single day.
    • They are wider in warm, wet years and narrower in cold, dry ones.

  4. Why do scientists need proxy data as well as thermometers?

    • Thermometers only go back to the 1850s, so proxies reveal much older climate.
    • Thermometers are always wrong, so proxies are needed for accuracy.
    • Proxies are cheaper, so scientists prefer them to thermometers.
    • Thermometers cannot measure temperature during the summer months.

  5. Roughly how far back do Antarctic ice cores reach for carbon dioxide history?

    • About 8 million years.
    • About 800 years.
    • About 80 years.
    • About 800,000 years.

  6. Which evidence from satellites shows that the climate is changing?

    • Shrinking ice sheets and rising sea levels.
    • Falling sales of winter clothing in shops.
    • Rising numbers of tourists visiting the Alps.
    • Increasing numbers of new roads built each year.

  7. Why is evidence much stronger when many independent sources agree?

    • Agreeing sources always come from a single country, so they share the same national bias and funding.
    • Each source copies the others, so the same mistake is repeated.
    • Separate teams, methods and places reaching the same result is hard to dismiss as error or bias.
    • Many sources cost more money to produce, so the people paying for them must surely be correct.

  8. What does provenance ask about a source?

    • Who made it, when, how and why.
    • Whether it was printed on recycled paper.
    • How many colours it uses and how long it is.
    • Whether it has pictures on the cover page.

  9. What does peer review mean?

    • Journalists rewrite the research for the news each day.
    • Friends of the scientist read the work for fun.
    • Members of the public vote on the research online.
    • Other expert scientists check the work before it is published.

  10. What does the abbreviation IPCC stand for?

    • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
    • International Plan for Carbon Capture.
    • Independent Panel of Coastal Climate.
    • Institute of Polar Climate Change.

  11. What does an anomaly show on a climate graph?

    • The overall direction of the line from start to end.
    • A point well above or below the overall trend.
    • The name of the organisation that published the graph.
    • The total of all the values in the data set added up.

  12. A graph shows temperature rising by 0.6 degrees over 30 years. What is the rate of change per decade?

    • 1.8 degrees per decade.
    • 0.2 degrees per decade.
    • 0.02 degrees per decade.
    • 0.6 degrees per decade.

  13. Carbon dioxide rose from 317 to 421 parts per million. What is the increase?

    • 104 ppm.
    • 421 ppm.
    • 738 ppm.
    • 94 ppm.

  14. From 1980 (0.3 degrees) to 2020 (1.1 degrees), how much did the temperature change, and over how long?

    • 0.8 degrees over 20 years.
    • 0.3 degrees over 40 years.
    • 1.4 degrees over 40 years.
    • 0.8 degrees over 40 years.

  15. From 1990 (0.4 degrees) to 2010 (0.9 degrees), what is the rate of warming per decade?

    • 0.5 degrees per decade.
    • 0.25 degrees per decade.
    • 2.0 degrees per decade.
    • 0.1 degrees per decade.

  16. Which source is more reliable, and why?

    • A 2023 IPCC report, because many experts peer-reviewed it and its purpose is neutral.
    • An oil-company advert, because it is paid for and widely seen.
    • An anonymous social media post, because it has been shared by many users.
    • An unsigned blog post, because it is written quickly and posted often.

  17. Which provenance test does an advert paid for by an oil company most clearly fail?

    • When: it was published within the last year.
    • Why: it has a clear commercial reason to shape the message.
    • Who: it was written by a named university scientist.
    • How: it was checked against the Met Office's own records.

  18. Which conclusion is best supported by the carbon dioxide data from 1900 to 2023?

    • Carbon dioxide rose from 296 to 421 ppm, a steady rise that has sped up recently.
    • Carbon dioxide stayed flat at 296 ppm for more than a century.
    • Carbon dioxide fell from 421 to 296 ppm over the same period.
    • Carbon dioxide rose only in 1960 and then stopped rising completely.

  19. Which judgement about one unusually cold winter is best supported?

    • One cold winter is an anomaly and cannot disprove the long-term warming trend.
    • One cold winter proves that global warming has completely stopped.
    • One cold winter shows the trend is rising even faster than before.
    • One cold winter means every climate graph in the world is wrong.

  20. Which is the best judgement on whether we can be completely certain about climate change?

    • Yes, because a single source is always perfectly accurate in every way, so no other evidence is ever needed.
    • Yes, because the climate has never changed at any point in the past.
    • No source is perfectly certain, but independent evidence with clear provenance makes high confidence reasonable.
    • No, because scientists always disagree about every single point of climate, so no conclusion can ever be drawn.

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