Greenhouse Gases

Simply put, without greenhouse gases the earth would be a frozen planet. Incapable of sustaining life as we know it. There would be no plants, no trees, no animals, just frozen ice and stone.

We need greenhouse gases to capture and hold heat from the sun. Not enough greenhouse gases and we are in an ice age. Too much greenhouse gases and we are in the age of the dinosaurs, or worse... to warm to sustain life as we now know it.

The dominant natural greenhouse gases are H20 (water), CO2 (carbon dioxide), CH4 (methane), and Nitrous oxide (N2O).

Chiefly, these gases and the ones that keep us warm enough to live relatively comfortably here on earth. The natural forces imposed on our climate system; such as the external forcing of the sun and the Milankovitch cycles, and the internal (terrestrial) climate forcings generally regulate the amount of warmth we enjoy.

The main concern today is that through industrial processes, mankind has altered the natural balance of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere and that has altered the climate forcing.

Understanding what it means to add greenhouse gases:

If you need to go somewhere in your car, you need to add gas. Your measure of distance is MPG (Miles per Gallon) or KPL (Kilometers per Liter). The same applies to temperature in our atmosphere. The atmosphere is the tank. The more gas you add, the more distance you can travel. The difference is that in this case the distance is temperature, not miles.

http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/what-we-dont-know

Links

• 2008, Nov NASA - Water Vapor Confirmed as Major Player in Climate Change
  
• Dept of Energy - Energy Information Administration
  
• Environmental Protection Agency
• NOAA - Earth Systems Research Laboratory/Annual Greenhouse Gas Index
• Greenhouse 101 - Reference: Goode, Philip 1998. "Earthshine Measurements of Global Atmospheric Properties."

Greenhouse Gases:

• http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/index.html

How do we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas?

CO2 absorbs infrared heat

• YouTube: Iain Stewart demonstrates infrared radiation absorption by CO2
  
• http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk_watexpgreenhouse.htm

Major GHG's (Greenhouse Gases)

• http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/co2.html
• http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html
• http://www.epa.gov/nitrousoxide/sources.html

Human & Global Impacts

• http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/co2_human.html
• http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/globalghg.html

High GWP's (Global Warming Potential) Gases

• http://www.epa.gov/highgwp/sources.html
• http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/oct/HQ_08-268_Greenhouse_gas.html

Greenhouse Gas Concentration

• http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
• http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/
• http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/globalview/
• http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/

Atmospheric Lifetime

• http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~victor/archer.subm.clim.change.pdf

Real Climate:

• What does the lag of CO₂ behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming? () ()
• How do we know that recent CO₂ increases are due to human activities? () () ()
• CO₂ Fertilization
• Water vapour: feedback or forcing? () ()
• The Acid Ocean – the Other Problem with CO2 Emission
• Busy Week for Water Vapor
• 650,000 years of greenhouse gas concentrations () ()
• Methane hydrates and global warming
• Calculating the greenhouse effect
• Methane hydrates and global warming
• Scientists baffled! () ()
• Kristof on the Apocalypse
• Positive feedbacks from the carbon cycle
• Buying a stairway to heaven?
• Rasslin' swamp gas
• How much CO₂ emission is too much? () ()
• The sky IS falling () ()
• Learning from a simple model
• The lag between temperature and CO₂. (Gore's got it right.)
• Beck to the future
• Thin Soup and a Thin Story () () ()
• Part II: What Ångström didn't know
• A Saturated Gassy Argument () ()
• The CO₂ problem in 6 easy steps
• My model, used for deception
• CO2 equivalents
• Is the ocean carbon sink sinking? () ()
• Hot off the projector #3: Atmospheric CO₂ to 800 kyr ago
• Venus Unveiled
• CO₂ is not the only greenhouse gas, and greenhouse effects are not the only CO₂ problem () ()