Greenhouse gas effect and who debunked Climate Change mystery

 

 Photo source: NASA Climate Kids

The advent of the industrial revolution saw a surge in greenhouse gas emmisions.

Greenhouse effect is sparked when long infrared radiation is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases.

Planet Earth is now warming faster than any other time in recorded history. 

Higher temperatures over a certain period of time are altering weather patterns and disrupting the normal balance of nature.

How greenhouse gases cause global warming

Greenhouse gas emissions occur when combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

As greenhouse gas emissions cover the Earth, they trap the sun's heat and prevent it from escaping to the space. This leads to global warming and climate change. 

NASA climate kids observed that too much greenhouse gases cause the Earth's atmosphere to trap more heat that it causes it to warm up.

Causes of Climate Change

According to UN report, combustion of fossil fuels accounts to over 75% of the global greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon dioxide constitute 90% of the entire global greenhouse gas emmisions.

Transport Sector: Most vehicles are powered by the combustion of fossil fuels and produce carbon dioxide that blankets the atmosphere and trap Sun's heat.

Manufacturing Sector: Manufacturing goods involve fossil fuel combustion to produce energy for making commodities such as iron, steel, cement, plastic, clothes and even food products.

Power generation: Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity lead to huge chunks of global emissions. The resultant product include carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide that traps the Sun's heat.

Deforestation: When trees are cut down they release the carbon they had stored. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which is essential in photosynthesis.

Greenhouse effect

Scientific research indicates that greenhouse effect is similar to the glass walls of the green house that traps heat. 

Atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide trap heat similar to the glass roof of a greenhouse.

The process makes Earth much warmer than it would be without an atmosphere.

Greenhouse effect, heat-trapping gases, make Earth a comfortable place to live.

The ability of greenhouse gases to trap heat from the sun is what makes the planet Earth habitable to humans.

However, a surge in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere poses an existential threat to humans and other living things.

Greenhouse gases absorbs the solar energy and keep heat close to the Earth's surface, rather than letting it escape into space.

The trapping of heat is referred as the greenhouse effect.

Discoveries of Climate Change: Architects of Climate Science

National Geographic reports indicate that in 1824 Joseph Fourier, a French mathematician calculated that the world would be much colder if it had no atmosphere.

In 1896 Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish Scientist, linked a rise in Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels with a warming effect.

Arrhenius was the first person to deploy the rule of physical chemistry in estimation of the extent to which increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide are responsible for the Earth's increasing surface temperature. 

His research work played a vital role in the emergence of modern climate science.

In the 1960s, Charles D Keeling, an American scientist, demonstrated that the quantity of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere is enough to trigger global warming.

Keeling's experimental recording of carbon dioxide confirmed Arrhenius's proposition on the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming by documenting the progressively rising carbon dioxide levels. 

The Keeling Curve is a graphical representation of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere based on the continuous Mauna Loa Observatory recording from 1958.

Keeling Curve measures the progressive buildup of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere.

Arrhenius study would later be revisited in 1988 when James E Hansen, an American Climate Scientist, attested in a conference that the greenhouse effect had been detected and was changing the world.

In the Congressional testimony on climate change, Hansen raised emboldened awareness of global warming, and advocated for stern action to avoid toxic climate change.

In his barometer, UK is the largest contributor of climate change, followed by USA and Gemany.

Battle for Climate Change

The world is at a war against the existential threat to the survival of human species on the planet Earth.

World leaders, civil organizations, climate activists among other social groups have risen to the occasion in in championing for action against increased carbon emmisions in the atmosphere to mitigate global warming.

Some countries have embarked on rigorous tree planting activities as mitigative measures against increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Trees purifiy the atmosphere with oxygen and in exchange they consume carbon dioxide.