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Climate-Chemistry Application Items

Like many journeys, study can be boring and tiresome and often you wonder if you are getting anywhere at all. But eventually you will reach a place where you not only can see how far you have gone, but a place where you can see things that you couldn't see before, or maybe you reach a place where things that you' ve seen before now look different and perhaps more under­ standable. Fundamentally, this is a biology book. Why study biology? Living things are fas­ cinating for a wealth of reasons—their diversity, their complexity combined with a fundamental simplicity, their function­ ing that begs for explanation, the multiple ways that living things exhibit organiza­ tion, the multiple interrelationships between different living things.

Figures (10)

Greenhouse gases trap some of the heat that results when sunlight heats the Earth's surface. Three important greenhouse gases are shown symbolically in this image: carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane.
Physical drivers of global warming that has happened so far. Future global warming potential for long-lived drivers like carbon dioxide emissions is not represented. Whiskers on each bar show the possible error range.
Atmospheric absorption and scattering at different wavelengths of electromagnetic waves. The largest absorption band of carbon dioxide is not far from the maximum in the thermal emission from ground, and it partly closes the window of transparency of water—explaining carbon dioxide's major heat-trapping effect.
Hansen et al. (2025) wrote that the IPCC had underestimated aerosols' cooling effect, causing it to also underestimate climate sensitivity (Earth's responsiveness to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations).[27] In what Hansen called a Faustian bargain, regulation of aerosols improved air quality, but aerosols' cooling effect became inadequate to temper the increasing warming effect of greenhouse gases—explaining unexpectedly large global warming in 2023–2024.[27]
Longwave-infrared absorption coefficients of primary greenhouse gases. Water vapor absorbs over a broad range of wavelengths. Earth emits thermal radiation particularly strongly in the vicinity of the carbon dioxide 15-micron absorption band. The relative importance of water vapor decreases with increasing altitude.
The radiative forcing (warming influence) of long-lived atmospheric greenhouse gases has accelerated, almost doubling in 40 years.[42][43]
Most CO2 emissions have been absorbed by carbon sinks, including plant growth, soil uptake, and ocean uptake (2020 Global Carbon Budget).
Taking into account direct and indirect emissions, industry is the sector with the highest share of global emissions. Data as of 2019 from the IPCC.
Global greenhouse gas emission scenarios, based on policies and pledges as of 11/21

Key Points

  • The concentration of a greenhouse gas is typically measured in parts per million (ppm) or parts per billion (ppb) by volume.
  • Carbon dioxide emissions are causing about three-quarters of global warming, while methane emissions cause most of the rest.
  • Methane hydrate is flammable because when it is heated, the methane is released as a gas (Figure 18.3.4).
  • Methane and nitrous oxide are measured by other instruments, such as the range-resolved infrared differential absorption lidar (DIAL).
  • Radiative forcing is a metric calculated in watts per square meter, which characterizes the impact of an external change in a factor that influences climate.
  • The geological carbon cycle is shown diagrammatically in Figure 5.6.1.

Terms

Tap a term for a plain-language explanation.

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