Chemically, carbon dioxide is incredibly simple—it is just one carbon atom linked with two oxygen atoms. Together they create a colorless gas that makes up just a tiny fraction of the Earth's atmosphere, about 0.04%.
Earth Sciences
13 hours ago
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Accelerated climate change is a major and acute threat to life on Earth. Rising temperatures are caused by microbes producing 50% of atmospheric methane which is 30-times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat. These elevated ...
Bio & Medicine
Feb 2, 2023
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57
Nitrogen changes form as it cycles between air, soil, and life. Soils, for example, emit nitrogen either as inert dinitrogen (N2), which dominates our atmosphere, or as nitric oxide (NO) or nitrous oxide (N2O), the greenhouse ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 30, 2023
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Scientists have shed new light on the "self-cleaning" capacity of the atmosphere.
Earth Sciences
Jan 18, 2023
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A new study shows that global atmospheric dust—microscopic airborne particles from desert dust storms—has a slight overall cooling effect on the planet that has hidden the full amount of warming caused by greenhouse gases.
Earth Sciences
Jan 17, 2023
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Preliminary analyses of global satellite data by environmental researchers at the University of Bremen show that atmospheric concentrations of the two important greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) continued ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 13, 2023
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The favored refrain of climate deniers and those who oppose climate policies is that "the science is not settled." To some degree, this is true. Climate scientists are still uncertain about a number of phenomena. But it is ...
Environment
Jan 13, 2023
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37
Many people are aware of plastic pollution in the oceans. Photos of turtles or seabirds entangled in plastic garbage first went viral in the 1990s, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now the focus of highly publicized ...
Environment
Jan 10, 2023
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Earth's protective ozone layer is slowly but noticeably healing at a pace that would fully mend the hole over Antarctica in about 43 years, a new United Nations report says.
Environment
Jan 9, 2023
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Areas of low-oxygen water stretch for thousands of miles through the world's oceans. The largest of these "oxygen minimum zones" (OMZs) is found along the Pacific coast of North and South America, centered off the coast of ...
Environment
Jan 6, 2023
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Greenhouse gases are gases in an atmosphere that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. Common greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. In our solar system, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars and Titan also contain gases that cause greenhouse effects. Greenhouse gases greatly affect the temperature of the Earth; without them, Earth's surface would be on average about 33°C (59°F) colder than at present.
Human activities since the start of the industrial era around 1750 have increased the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The 2007 assessment report compiled by the IPCC observed that "changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, land cover and solar radiation alter the energy balance of the climate system", and concluded that "increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations is very likely to have caused most of the increases in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century".
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