Global warming and greenhouse effect 2

Hello everybody,

                There has been a lot of discussion among scientists whether climate change is a natural phenomenon or results from human beings since the Earth’s climates have been changing throughout the past hundreds of thousand years! However, nowadays almost all of the scientists believe that humans are the major part causing global warming. It is evident that human activities play an important role in accelerating the violence of global warming rather than its natural pace.

                In general condition, the earth receives 99.95% heat energy from the sun in the form of solar radiation. The rest of the heat comes from geothermal energy and radioactive decay within the earth itself. Since ancient times our world has perfectly maintained the balance of energy by reflecting and radiating the heat waves, derived from the sun, through the atmosphere. As a result, the net energy that the earth obtains a day is zero, bringing about a suitable weather conditions to all creatures on earth.


          http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/images/global_energy_budget_components.png

                 One of the mechanisms which help remain the globe’s heat energy is Greenhouse Effect. Covered by greenhouse gases, the earth can capture and absorb the heat, and reflect it back into the earth. Imagine the earth had no greenhouse gases, what would happen? Surely the world cannot maintain its energy. Furthermore, there must be a lot of fluctuation of the temperatures in every single day.  These gases, accordingly, function as the earth’s thin blanket covering our cold world.

               Nevertheless, in the past decades, there has been a high amount of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere due to various human activities, especially burning fossil fuels and deforestation. This increase of the greenhouse gases, acting like a thicker blanket, makes the heat inside the globe unable to release to the space; consequently, the earth temperature continually rises.



Global warming and greenhouse effect 1

Hello Everyone, I hope you have a nice day!

                Have you ever heard about the news saying that we’re all going to die in the next 200 years if we can’t stop global warming! Is this news too exaggerated or it speaks the truth? Let’s find it out.

                Today’s weather conditions which change considerably from the weather in the past come in for a lot of criticism and argument about the causes and its impacts on environments. People around the world consider this issue vital because they realize that it does not have an impact on only human beings, but also all lives on earth.

                What is Global Warming? How does it happen?

                Global warming is the phenomenon which the average surface temperatures above land and ocean increase. It is believed that this terrifying situation mostly results from a large amount of greenhouse gases, such as Carbon dioxide released from factories and vehicles, including Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) which is used to be refrigerants in air-conditioners, refrigerators, and used as aerosol-spray propellants, solvents, and foam-blowing agents. These substances will gradually float and accumulate themselves in the atmosphere. As a result, it causes Greenhouse Effect which prevents the heat from the sun from going out through the atmosphere.

“The map illustrates just how much warmer temperatures were in the decade (2000-2009) compared to average temperatures recorded between 1951 and 1980 (a common reference period for climate studies). The most extreme warming, shown in red, was in the Arctic. Very few areas saw cooler than average temperatures, shown in blue. Gray areas over parts of the Southern Ocean are places where temperatures were not recorded. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, is based on temperatures recorded at meteorological (weather) stations around the world and satellite data over the oceans.” NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day: 2009 Ends Warmest Decade on Record http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42392

And what is Greenhouse?

                                       

                   http://www.small-greenhouses.com/small-greenhouses/small-greenhouses-easygrow-greenhouse/

                 “A greenhouse is a house made of glass. It has glass walls and a glass roof. People grow tomatoes and flowers and other plants in them. A greenhouse stays warm inside, even during winter. Sunlight shines in and warms the plants and air inside. But the heat is trapped by the glass and can't escape. So during the daylight hours, it gets warmer and warmer inside a greenhouse, and stays pretty warm at night too.  
 

http://newfarm.osu.edu/crops/greenhouse.html


Earth's atmosphere does the same thing as the greenhouse. Gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide do what the roof of a greenhouse does. During the day, the Sun shines through the atmosphere. Earth's surface warms up in the sunlight. At night, Earth's surface cools, releasing the heat back into the air. But some of the heat is trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That's what keeps our Earth a warm and cozy 59 degrees Fahrenheit, on average.

If the greenhouse effect is too strong, Earth gets warmer and warmer. This is what is happening now. Too much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the air are making the greenhouse effect stronger.”

Reference: the Earth Science Communications Team_NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, 2010. What is a greenhouse              http://climate.nasa.gov/kids/bigQuestions/greenhouseEffect/#bg2.

Therefore, the world cannot release the heat from the sun to the space as it did. This is why the average Earth’s surface temperature rises. Although the average temperature does not increase much in the past century (around 2.0-4.5 degrees Celsius in the past century), it has been changing the globe’s weather conditions and has an adverse impact on all lives. This phenomenon is called ‘Climate Change’.

What's going on

Hi again,

Last time I was briefly talking about our huge problem--global warming and one important indicator--the ice. Today I am telling about the place where we can clearly see the impact of global warming, as well as other topics which I will post later. The place which I am talking about is Greenland. Since Greenland is the world’s largest island which most of the areas are covered by the ice and has some population, while other ice areas on the north and south poles have less or no population, we can see the effect not only on ice-melting but on human lives on the island as well.

Orthographic projection of Greenland 

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greenland_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg&page=1

Nevertheless, before I go exploring Greenland, I should give you some basic information about global warming, e.g. global warming occurrence, factors, and its violence.

                The next blog is about geographical features in Greenland, which you will know about its location, population, and people and society. In addition to the geographical features, I will bring you all down to more specific information--temperatures--which provides you with the understanding of the temperature changes in Greenland. Besides, you will be able to see the process of ice accumulation and melting so that I can show you the correlation between temperatures and ice-melting rates in Greenland. In the end, I will discuss about the impacts of global warming in Greenland in various aspects and seek for the prevention and solutions (the more opinions people give, the better solutions it becomes!).

Ice warning

Hi Guys

How much do you know about Greenland? What happens in Greenland nowadays? And why is it interesting? Here, I will tell you. Let’s begin!   

As we know from the news or someone can feel that the weather today is warmer than that in the past, there should be something wrong with the weather, shouldn’t there? Yes! This is the era of global warming. And what does the global warming have an impact on? Just humans and animals? I could say ‘No’. We can also see the effect on non-living things, such as temperature, moisture, sea, and wind. Nonetheless, in this boiling era, we need to look for something which can tell us or at least help us to become aware of the problem we are now facing—global warming.

http://www.wildencounters.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ice-crack-revealing-turquoise-coloured-water-Weddell-Sea-ice-Antarctica.jpg

                Since most of the ice sheets on earth are in the north and south poles, which are far away from our homes on land, we may not see the impact of global warming quite clearly. However, the place that we have never thought of may be able to tell or warn us about the problem. In my opinion, the most interesting non-living thing on earth that I want to focus on this blog is ‘ice’. If we take the ice out of the refrigerator and put it in a room with normal temperature for a while, it becomes water absolutely. But if we put it in another room where it is hotter, the ice must melt quicker in the same amount of time.  In the same token, if we are confronting global warming, there must be a higher rate of ice-melting. Therefore, we can use the information about ice melting to see how the global temperature changes.