Earth Sciences: The Greenhouse Effect

The Theory of Arrhenius.

The first suggestion that burning fossil fuels could warm the Earth's atmosphere was in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, the famous chemist. Few people believed him. The atmosphere was thought to be so big and so stable that it could not possibly be affected by small fires.

Global-Warming Effect.

In 1964 Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald, two American climatologists, developed a computer model of the atmosphere to predict how water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2, which is produced by burning carbon fuel) would affect the climate. The effect they found was global warming, popularly known as the greenhouse effect.

Carbon Dioxide and Infrared Radiation.

The normal carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has several specific effects, one of which is to hold the heat from the sun. Water vapor in the atmosphere blocks most infrared radiation from reaching the surface of the Earth. When visible...

[The entire page is 428 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass