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The Greenhouse Effect. Increasing Greenhouses Gases Are Warming the Planet. Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20 th century to the human expansion of the "greenhouse effect" 1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space. Life on Earth depends on energy coming from ...
Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates. These changes have a broad range of observed effects that are synonymous with the term.
A simplified animation of the greenhouse effect. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (Download en español.) more resources.
Methane Basics. Methane (CH 4) is a powerful greenhouse gas, and is the second-largest contributor to climate warming after carbon dioxide (CO 2). A molecule of methane traps more heat than a molecule of CO 2, but methane has a relatively short lifespan of 7 to 12 years in the atmosphere, while CO 2 can persist for hundreds of years or more.
More greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more climate extremes and widespread damaging effects across our planet. However, those future effects depend on the total amount of carbon dioxide we emit. So, if we can reduce emissions, we may avoid some of the worst effects.
New research shows that improved air quality caused by reducing emissions from burning fossil fuels and other sources would improve human health and prevent economic losses. That's according to projections by scientists at NASA, Duke University and Columbia University.
Carbon dioxide (CO 2) is an important heat-trapping gas, also known as a greenhouse gas, that comes from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and natural gas), from wildfires, and natural processes like volcanic eruptions.
Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface, our global ocean has a very high heat capacity. It has absorbed 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases, and the top few meters of the ocean store as much heat as Earth's entire atmosphere.
It turns out that most aerosols are cooling — that is to say, they reflect the sun’s energy back out into space. There is only one aerosol — soot, also known as black carbon — that actually helps contribute to global warming by boosting the warming effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide.