The Greenhouse Effect

By Michael Ashcroft

Article posted by Choice Corporate Housing

There are plenty of misconceptions regarding the greenhouse effect, one of which is that it’s a bad thing. In actual fact, it’s really rather useful. Let me explain…

The Principles

When radiation (energy) from the sun reaches the Earth, it heats the Earth up. The incoming radiation has a short wavelength, and is quite energetic. It passes through the atmosphere quite easily. Once it has been absorbed by the Earth, it is re emitted as radiation which has a longer wavelength. However, the emitted radiation is partially absorbed by the atmosphere, and so the Earth retains some energy. Essentially, the atmosphere acts like a kind of blanket to warm the Earth. (maps.grida.no/go/graphic/greenhouse_effect.html)

Not all the gases in the atmosphere contribute to this effect, however; only greenhouse gases. Greenhouses gases include carbon dioxide, methane and even water vapor.

The amount of energy retained by the Earth is proportional to the concentration of greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere; if the concentration of greenhouse gases increases, then the strength of the effect increases. (Concentration is the amount of something in a given volume, and in terms of carbon dioxide is measured in units of “parts per million” or “ppm”.) Put another way, if the concentration of greenhouse gases increases, more energy from the sun is trapped and the average temperature of the Earth increases.

Why It’s Important

It’s very important to understand, though, this is one of the many reasons I’m able to write this now. Without it, the Earth would be much colder than it is now, so it in itself is not a bad thing. It’s the reason we don’t freeze. If the Earth had no atmosphere, it would be very much more like Mars.

So the problem is that as we add more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we are increasing the strength of the greenhouse effect and artificially increasing the average temperature of the Earth. This is essentially climate change in a nutshell.

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