Greenhouse Gases and the Greenhouse Effect - Kids.
Greenhouse effect, a warming of Earth’s surface and troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere) caused by the presence of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and certain other gases in the air. Of those gases, known as greenhouse gases, water vapor has the largest effect.The greenhouse effect is a natural process that warms the Earth’s surface. When the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases include water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and some artificial chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).Greenhouse gases let the sun’s light shine onto the Earth’s surface, but they trap the heat that reflects back up into the atmosphere. In this way, they act like the insulating glass walls of a greenhouse. The greenhouse effect keeps Earth’s climate comfortable. Without it, surface temperatures would be cooler by about 33 degrees Celsius.
The greenhouse effect increases the temperature of the Earth by trapping heat in our atmosphere. This keeps the temperature of the Earth higher than it would be if direct heating by the Sun was the only source of warming.1 When sunlight reaches the surface of the Earth, some of it is absorbed which warms the ground and some bounces back to space as heat.The greenhouse effect John Bowman This article provides an Introduction to discussion of the greenhouse effect, which tt defines In terms of the radiative balance of the Earth-atmosphere sys- tem. It Identifies the 'greenhouse gases', which trap radiation Inside the system, traces the known changes in their concentration In recent times, and.
Greenhouse effect and climate change: scientific basis and overview 417 which have been adapted for running over long per- iods of simulated times (decades) and in which special attention has been given to represent those processes which are important for climate. These processes are expressed in terms of equations which describe the behavior.
