This is part 2 of the “Global Warming effects article” …continued here:

Greenhouse gases and CO2
The Sun’s rays hit the earth as long-wave radiation, which passes through greenhouse gases easily. However when they hit the earth the warm the planet and the energy is then radiated out from Earth as short wave infra-red radiation (heat) which is easily absorbed by greenhouses gases before it escapes into space. So the world gets warmer. This is the greenhouse effect and the leading greenhouse gases impacting on the environment are water vapor, CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.

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This article will be split into two parts, this is part 1 of the article. In a previous article we discussed why the climate varies over time, identifying the main change drivers. We discussed how greenhouse gases trapped the Sun’s heat close to the surface of the planet, while the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface (including the effects of pollution and volcanic activity) reflects heat away.

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The US Environmental Protection Agency defines climate change as “any significant change in measures of climate (such as temperature, precipitation, or wind) lasting for an extended period (decades or longer).” The EPA then defines global warming as “an average increase in the temperature of the atmosphere near the Earth’s surface and in the troposphere…”.

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Since the arrival and rapid expansion of complex multicellular life around 530 million years ago (called the Cambrian explosion), and up until the arrival of people on this planet, around 200,000 years ago, the World had faced five mass extinctions. Each extinction event saw and went on to cause gargantuan changes in the planet’s natural order.

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