The Greenhouse Effect is the atmosphere’s ability to trap heat from the sun, which causes the Earth’s climate to be warmer and more stable than it otherwise would be.
Understanding The Atmosphere
Our atmosphere acts like glass on a greenhouse, allowing
The Greenhouse Effect is the atmosphere’s ability to trap heat from the sun, which causes the Earth’s climate to be warmer and more stable than it otherwise would be.
Understanding The Atmosphere
Our atmosphere acts like glass on a greenhouse, allowing light and heat to penetrate and warm the Earth while slowing the radiation of heat back out into space.
This effect is essential for life on Earth as we know it, and it all depends on a fragile layer of gas. The atmosphere’s heat trapping capacity is significant given how small the atmosphere is relative to the Earth. If you imagine the Earth is the size of an orange, a piece of paper wrapped around the orange would represent the relative thickness of the Earth’s atmosphere.
How the Atmosphere Traps Heat
The Sun radiates heat and light in enormous amounts. This energy is comprised largely of short wavelength radiation which is able to pass through the gases in our atmosphere to reach the earth. When the sun’s energy reaches the Earth it bounces back out toward space as long wavelength, low energy radiation.
Our atmosphere traps some of the energy, like the glass of a greenhouse. As a result, not all of the long wavelength radiation is able to radiate freely back out into space. The gases absorb the long wavelength radiation, thus keeping the sun’s energy inside our atmosphere, which warms the Earth.
As we add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, it is as if we are adding extra panes of glass to a greenhouse, thus increasing the atmosphere’s ability to trap and ho