Try the fastest way to create flashcards

4.4: Climate Change

2.7 (3 reviews)
Get a hint
List greenhouse gases found in the atmosphere.


Understanding: Carbon dioxide and water vapor are the most significant greenhouse gases.
Click the card to flip 👆
1 / 26
1 / 26
Terms in this set (26)
Carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere naturally when organisms respire or decompose, carbonate rocks are weathered, forest fires occur, and volcanoes erupt.

Carbon dioxide is also added to the atmosphere through human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and forests and the production of cement.
Image: *State the sources of CO2 in the atmosphere.*


Understanding:  Carbon dioxide and water vapor are the most significant greenhouse gases.
Human activities such as agriculture, fuel combustion, wastewater management, and industrial processes are increasing the amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) gas in the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is also naturally present in the atmosphere as part of the Earth's nitrogen cycle, and has a variety of natural sources.
Image: *State the sources of nitrous oxide gas in the atmosphere.*


Understanding:  Other gases including methane and nitrogen oxides have less impact.
There are several processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Most dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.

Methane is mostly removed from the atmosphere by chemical reaction, persisting for about 12 years.

Water vapour has a very short atmospheric lifetime, of the order of hours to days, because it is rapidly removed as rain and snow.
When the Sun’s shortwave energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated as longwave radiation from the Earth's surface. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb some of the longwave radiation, which makes the atmosphere and Earth's surface warmer.
Image: *Explain the greenhouse effect, with reference to shortwave radiation from the sun, longwave radiation from the Earth and the effects of greenhouse gases.*


Understanding:  Longer wave radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases that retain the heat in the atmosphere.​
Water vapor, CO2, methane and N2O are greenhouse gases because they are able to absorb most of the Earth's emitted longwave infrared radiation, which heats the atmosphere.

Other atmospheric gases (such as N2 and O2) do not interact with longwave radiation, and therefore have no consequence for the greenhouse effect.
Image: *Explain why water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are greenhouse gases.*


Understanding:  Longer wave radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases that retain the heat in the atmosphere.​