Greenhouse Effect

Greenhouse Effect

The energy that lights and warms Earth comes from the Sun. Most of the energy that floods onto Our planet is short-wave radiation, including visible light. When this energy strikes the surface of Earth, the energy changes from light to heat and warms Earth. Earth's surface, in turn, releases some of this heat as long-wave infrared radiation.

Carbon Cycle Photosynthesis plays a crucial role in the carbon cycle. Carbon continuously circulates in the earth's ecosystem. In the atmosphere, it exists as colourless, odourless carbon dioxide gas, which is used by plants in the process of photosynthesis.

Animals acquire the carbon stored in plant tissue when they eat and exhale carbon dioxide as a by-product of metabolism. Although some carbon is removed from circulation temporarily as coal, petroleum, fossil fuels, gas, and limestone deposits, cellular respiration and photosynthesis balance to keep the amount of atmospheric carbon relatively stable.

Industrialization, however, has contributed additional carbon dioxide to the environment. Much of this long-wave infrared radiation makes it all the way back out to space, but a portion remains trapped in Earth's atmosphere.

Certain gases in the atmosphere, including water vapour, carbon dioxide, and methane, provide the trap. Absorbing and reflecting infrared waves radiated by Earth, these gases conserve heat as the glass in a greenhouse does and are thus known as greenhouse gases.

As the concentration of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases, more heat energy remains trapped below. All life on Earth relies on this greenhouse colder, and ice would cover Earth from pole to pole.

However, a growing excess of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere threatens to tip the balance in the other direction- toward continual warning.

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