Global warming is when the earth heats up (the temperature rises). It happens when greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane) trap heat and light from the sun in the earth’s atmosphere, which increases the temperature. This hurts many people, animals, and plants. Many cannot take the change, so they die.
In its most commonly used sense, “global warming” refers to the gradual warming of global-average temperatures due to the slowly increasing concentrations of man-made atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide. But global warming can alternatively refer to simply the observation of warming, without iplying the cause of that warming.
The burning of fossil fuels, mainly petroleum and coal, produces carbon dioxide as one of the by-products. As of 2010, the concentration of carbon dioxide is about 50% higher than it was before the start of the industrial revolution in the late 1800's. The potential warming effect of the extra CO2 is through its ability to absorb and emit infrared radiation, which is the type of radiation the Earth continually loses to outer space in response to heating by sunlight. This makes carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas, albeit a weaker one in the atmosphere than water vapor.
The net effect of greehouse gases on is to keep the lower layers of the atmosphere warmer that they otherwise would be without those gases. Therefore, it has seemed reasonable to assume that an increase in greenhouse gases would lead to warming.
But the big question is, how much warming
In its most commonly used sense, “global warming” refers to the gradual warming of global-average temperatures due to the slowly increasing concentrations of man-made atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide. But global warming can alternatively refer to simply the observation of warming, without iplying the cause of that warming.
The burning of fossil fuels, mainly petroleum and coal, produces carbon dioxide as one of the by-products. As of 2010, the concentration of carbon dioxide is about 50% higher than it was before the start of the industrial revolution in the late 1800's. The potential warming effect of the extra CO2 is through its ability to absorb and emit infrared radiation, which is the type of radiation the Earth continually loses to outer space in response to heating by sunlight. This makes carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas, albeit a weaker one in the atmosphere than water vapor.
The net effect of greehouse gases on is to keep the lower layers of the atmosphere warmer that they otherwise would be without those gases. Therefore, it has seemed reasonable to assume that an increase in greenhouse gases would lead to warming.
But the big question is, how much warming
