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What Is The Greenhouse Effect?: ACS Climate Science Toolkit - Narratives

You know that when you stand in sunlight, you feel warmer than when you are in shadow, so you can feel that the light (radiant energy) the sun gives off carries energy that can warm an object—you. Although you usually cannot see it, all objects give off radiant energy and you can sometimes feel this energy. For example, if there is a pot of hot water on your stove, you can feel the radiant energy it gives off without touching it. You usually call what you feel “heat,” but it is more accurate to

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52 views3 pages

What Is The Greenhouse Effect?: ACS Climate Science Toolkit - Narratives

You know that when you stand in sunlight, you feel warmer than when you are in shadow, so you can feel that the light (radiant energy) the sun gives off carries energy that can warm an object—you. Although you usually cannot see it, all objects give off radiant energy and you can sometimes feel this energy. For example, if there is a pot of hot water on your stove, you can feel the radiant energy it gives off without touching it. You usually call what you feel “heat,” but it is more accurate to

Uploaded by

salah
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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What Is the Greenhouse Effect?

ACS Climate Science Toolkit | Narratives


Remark: “The Earth is warming and climate science shows that the warming has something to do with the
greenhouse effect.”

Reply: “I know. I wish I knew more about it, but the greenhouse effect is too difficult to understand.”

Not really. There are only a few things you need to know, some of which are probably already
familiar, to understand the basic idea of the greenhouse effect and why it is so important for the
Earth.

You know that when you stand in sunlight, you feel warmer than when you are in shadow, so
you can feel that the light (radiant energy) the sun gives off carries energy that can warm an
object—you. Although you usually cannot see it, all objects give off radiant energy and you can
sometimes feel this energy. For example, if there is a pot of hot water on your stove, you can feel
the radiant energy it gives off without touching it. You usually call what you feel “heat,” but it is
more accurate to think of it as a kind of invisible light called “infrared radiation” that warms
your skin, just like the sunlight. The amount of infrared radiation energy a warmed object gives
off depends on its temperature—the higher the temperature, the more energy is given off. As you
know, you can easily distinguish between a warm object and a hot object by holding your hand
near the objects and feeling the difference in heating effect on your skin.

These ideas are basic to understanding the energy balance between the sun and the Earth. Just as
sunlight warms you, it warms the surface of the Earth as well. The Earth does not continue to get
hotter and hotter as it absorbs energy from the sun, because it gives off energy to space as
invisible infrared radiation. In order to come into energy balance, the amount of infrared
radiation energy given off by the Earth has to be equal to the amount of energy absorbed from
the sunlight. The amount of infrared radiation energy the Earth gives off depends on its
temperature. The average Earth temperature required for energy balance with the sun would be a
frigid –18 °C (0 °F), if there were no atmospheric greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect has
kept the Earth’s average temperature a good deal higher for billions of years, making it possible
for life as we know it to evolve. Over the past several millennia the average Earth temperature
has been about 15 °C (59 °F).

The figure below illustrates how greenhouse gases keep the Earth warmer than it would be
without them. Energy from the sun is shown on the left where you see that part of the radiant
energy from the sun passes through the atmosphere, is absorbed, and warms the Earth’s surface.
The rest is reflected, largely by clouds in the atmosphere and ice and snow on the surface, and
not absorbed. Energy lost by the Earth is shown at the right where the fates of infrared radiation
emitted (given off) by the Earth are shown. The straight red arrow passing from the surface
through the atmosphere represents the fraction of the emitted infrared radiation that passes into
space through the atmosphere without change. The rest of the infrared radiation, the thick red
arrow, is absorbed by the greenhouse gases and clouds in the atmosphere and then re-emitted in
all directions as shown by the collection of orange arrows. This ability to absorb and re-emit
infrared radiation is the critical requirement for greenhouse gases. All gases whose molecules
have three or more atoms are greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapor (H2O), and
methane (CH4) are important greenhouse gases that have maintained Earth’s warm temperature
for billions of years.

Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Some of the re-emitted energy remains within the atmosphere or returns to the surface and
warms the lower atmosphere and surface. The rest of the re-emitted energy leaves the
atmosphere and goes into space. The outcome of this absorption-emission process by the
greenhouse gases is that less energy leaves the atmosphere than is emitted by the Earth below.
But to be in energy balance with the sun, the amount of energy going into space has to be
equivalent to the amount that would be emitted by a surface at –18 °C. In order for this amount
of energy to leave the Earth’s greenhouse atmosphere, the surface must be warmer than –18 °C.
For several millennia—until the past two centuries—an average surface temperature of about 15
°C kept the sun and Earth in energy balance. That is, the same amount of infrared radiant energy
was leaving the atmosphere as was being absorbed at the surface from the sun’s radiant energy.

The increased amounts of greenhouse gases human activities are adding to the atmosphere have
upset the balance that has been in place since the end of the last ice age. Adding more
greenhouse gases decreases the amount of infrared radiation energy leaving the atmosphere. To
get the energy back in balance, the surface of the Earth has to warm up, so that it will emit more
infrared energy, some of which will leave the atmosphere and compensate for the effect of the
added greenhouse gases. Thus, the greenhouse effect, which is essential for creating the climate
for life on Earth, is also responsible for the Earth getting warmer than it was before we started
burning large amounts of fossil fuels.

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