Global warming has become a matter of concern.Give reason?
Answers
Research into greenhouse gases and their influence on our climate is not a new craze. It has roots that extend back to the discoveries of quantum mechanics and the structure of the atom.
Some people argue that concern for global warming is a modern phenomenon. And that scientists and environmental activists invented these worries to raise awareness of rising greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
In the same breath, they might also question how changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere can really change the Earth’s climate.
The atmosphere after all contains relatively little CO2 compared with other gases. For example, there’s much more water vapour, which is also an important greenhouse gas. So, how can a tiny amount of CO2 be so important?
The greenhouse effect was discovered more than 100 years ago
In 1896, the world renowned Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize Winner Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), described how CO2 influences the climate. He suggested that increasing emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels could lead to a global warming—the so-called greenhouse effect.
In the subsequent decades, research into greenhouse gasses continued. But it was not until 1938 that Guy Callendar first showed how the Earth’s temperature was already increasing.
Callendar was born in 1898, just two years after Arrhenius first published his work on CO2. He was an engineer by trade but he was also fascinated by the atmosphere, and he devoted his spare time to studying it. He measured the concentration of gases, the atmosphere’s structure, how atmospheric currents moved around the planet, and the influence of the sun’s rays at various latitudes.
Greenhouse gases trap energy from the sun in the lower atmosphere. Without these gases, the Earth would be a chilly minus 18 degrees Centigrade. In contrast, the atmosphere on Mars is almost entirely made of carbon dioxide, but it has a very thin atmosphere and little to no methane or water vapour, producing a weaker greenhouse effect.
And it was this work that led to the world’s first climate model.
His model was very primitive in comparison with the well established models used to predict the weather and climate by meteorologists and climate scientists today. But it formed the basis upon which all modern studies of climate science have since developed.
His work culminated in this 1938 study, which showed that humans had already emitted enough CO2 into the atmosphere to increase the average temperature on Earth and that the Earth was responding: Over the previous 50 years, the average temperature had indeed increased as per Arrhenius’s proposed greenhouse effect.
