What Causes Global Warming

Here we will discuss what causes global warming and hopefully it may get you thinking what you can to help prevent it.

Virtually 100% of the observed temperature increase over the last 50 years has been because of the increase in the atmosphere of greenhouse gas concentrations like water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane and ozone. Greenhouse gases are those gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect. The largest contributing source of greenhouse gas is the burning of fossil fuels leading to the emission of carbon dioxide.

The greenhouse effect

When sunlight reaches Earth s surface some is absorbed and warms the earth and most of the rest is radiated back to the atmosphere at a longer wavelength than sun light. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb some of these longer wavelengths before they are lost to space. The absorption of this longwave radiant energy warms the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases act like a mirror and reflect back to the Earth some of the heat energy, which would otherwise be lost to space. The reflecting back of heat energy by the atmosphere is called the greenhouse effect.

The major natural greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); carbon dioxide CO 2, which causes 9-26%; methane, which causes 4-9%, and ozone, which causes 3-7%. It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes a certain percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive. Other greenhouse gases include, but are not limited to, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons.

What Causes Global warming by greenhouse effect

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere act like a mirror and reflect back to the Earth a part of the heat radiation, which would otherwise be lost to space. The higher the concentration of green house gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more heat energy is being reflected back to the Earth. The emission of carbon dioxide into the environment mainly from burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, petrol, kerosene, etc.) has been increased dramatically over the past 50 years.

The increase of greenhouse gas concentration (mainly carbon dioxide) led to a substantial warming of the earth and the sea, called global warming. In other words: The increase in the man-made emission of greenhouse gases is the cause for global warming.

Now we know what causes global warming as far as gases are concerned what really is the problem is what causes these gases to occur. You guessed it! We do.

Global warming is occurring much quicker than can be attributed to natural causes and we are the cause of it.

So what can be done to help and reduce this great surge in the warming of the earth.

The “ What Causes Global Warming “ blog hopefully will point the way on how you can help to prevent this increase in global warming.

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