A warming planet: learning about the greenhouse effect
This is the final blog post about geophysics. We are going to venture into the last domain of the planet we haven't explored, the atmosphere. In particular we are going to talk about the greehouse effect and an experiment I have done about it. The greenhouse effect is a natural process by which light from the sun goes through the atmosphere as visible light and it warms the surface of the Earth. When the surface cools down, it emits some of this energy back as infrared. This infrared radiation can bounce on some specific gases in the atmosphere, causing the planet to warm up. These gases include carbon dioxide which is the most well-known gas but there are other more potent ones like methane and nitrous oxide. It is important to note that without the greenhouse effect Earth's average temperature would drop from a comfortable 15°C (59°F) down to a freezing -18°C (-0.4°F) , making the planet uninhabitable for most living things. Surprisingly, carbon dioxide only represents a ver...