Chapter 3:

Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming

Introduction
 “Climate Change” - alteration of the world’s climate that we humans
are causing, through fossil fuel burning, clearing forests and other
practices that increases the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG)
in the atmosphere.
 In this chapter, each factor that contributes to global warming and
climate change will be discussed.
3. Learning Outcome
 At the end of Chapter 3, you are expected to be able to:
a) recognize different greenhouse gases
b) distinguish the effects and impacts of these different greenhouse gases to
the Earth’s atmosphere
c) define what is greenhouse effect and global warming and how does it
affect the global climate
d) list different human activities that contribute to the continuing changes
in global climate that causes climate change and global warming and;
e) evaluate the effects of these phenomena to different processes and living
organisms on Earth.
Learning Content

What are greenhouse

methane gases? !”
water vapor

carbon dioxide
nitrous oxide
The Greenhouse Gases
✓ carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide= most
powerful long lived greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere
✓ sources, sinks, and atmospheric concentrations of
these compounds are considered.
✓ Halogenated organic compounds (of which CFCs are a
subset), SF6, and ozone in the lower and upper
atmosphere.
✓ Water vapor is the single most powerful greenhouse
gas in the atmosphere.
 Water vapor has approximately twice the
effect of the second most powerful
greenhouse gas—carbon dioxide.
 As a result of global warming it is likely that
human activities will have a significant
indirect impact on the level of water vapor in
the atmosphere.
 Water vapor is the most important
greenhouse gas and the development of a
better understanding on the effect of global
warming on atmospheric water in all its forms
(solid, liquid, and gas) is of critical
importance.
 Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
Human impact on the levels of carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the atmosphere
 First, emissions of CO2 associated with human
activities, while large on a human scale, are
small when compared to natural fluxes of CO2
associated with photosynthesis, respiration,
uptake into ocean water, and release from
ocean water.
 Second, there are several large reservoirs of
CO2 which are continually exchanging CO2
 Human activities are believed to lead to emission of
carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion and
cement production from changes in tropical land
use. The atmospheric burden of CO2 is increasing.
 For terrestrial systems CO2-climate feedbacks
include effects of temperature, precipitation and
radiation changes (changes in cloudiness) on
primary production and decomposition.
 For marine systems feedback occurs through
climatic influences on ocean circulation and
chemistry. Rates of biological activity generally
increase with warmer temperatures and increasing
moisture. The feedbacks of changing carbon dioxide
and climate on ecosystems are many and complex.
 3. Methane (CH4)
 most abundant well mixed greenhouse gas after carbon
dioxide.
 In contrast to CO2 methane is removed from the atmosphere
via chemical reaction with hydroxyl (OH) radicals.
 Methane plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and
it can influence the levels of other important trace species via
its reaction with OH.
 All other factors being constant, increased atmospheric levels
of methane will result in decreased concentrations of OH and
hence a longer lifetime for any gas whose atmospheric lifetime
is influenced by reaction with OH.
 an increase in methane will lead to the production of more
tropospheric ozone which is an important greenhouse gas.
 Methane is emitted into the atmosphere by a large
number of natural and anthropogenic sources.
 Natural sources - contribute approximately 30% of
the methane flux while anthropogenic sources
account for the remaining 70%.
 The largest natural sources are wetlands and
oceans, respectively.
 Anthropogenic sources are natural gas facilities,
coal mines, petroleum industry, coal combustion,
enteric fermentation, animal waste, rice paddies/
biomass burning, landfills, and domestic sewage.
 Nitrous Oxide (N2O)

 The atmospheric concentration of N2O has increased by

approximately 16% since pre-industrial times. In addition
to its importance as a greenhouse gas, N2O is transported
through the troposphere into the stratosphere where it
reacts with O(1D) atoms and is the source of
stratospheric NOx (O(1D) atoms are electronically excited
oxygen atoms).
 Natural sources of N2O associated with emission from
soils and the oceans to the atmosphere.
 Anthropogenic emissions of N2O - biomass burning, fossil
fuel combustion, industrial production of acidic and nitric
acids, and the use of nitrogen fertilizer.
 Photodissociation in the stratosphere is the major (90%)
loss mechanism for N2O in the atmosphere
4. Halogenated Organic Compounds

 organiccompounds containing
one or more halogen atoms.
 canbe fully substituted where
all of the hydrogens in the
molecule have been replaced by
halogen atoms, or partially
substituted where some
hydrogens remain.
5. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
and perfluorocarbons (PFCs)
 subsets of halogenated organic compounds in
which all hydrogen atoms have been
substituted by fluorine and chlorine atoms, or
solely by fluorine atoms.
 CFC-12 (CCl2F2) and CFC-11 (CCl3F) are the
two most abundant CFCs in the atmosphere
and are present at levels of 0.5 and 0.25 ppb
(parts per billion), respectively.
 CF4 is the most abundant PFC and is found at
a concentration of 0.08 ppb in the
atmosphere.
 Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and hydrofluorochlorocarbons
(HCFCs) are compounds in which some, but not all, of the
hydrogens have been replaced with fluorine (HFCs) or
fluorine and chlorine atoms (HCFCs).
 Halons are a class of compounds containing bromine and
chlorine (but no hydrogen).
 There are no significant natural sources of CFCs, PFCs, HFCs,
HCFCs, or Halons.
 These compounds were not present in the preindustrial
atmosphere, and their presence in contemporary air reflects
emissions associated with industrial activities
 Carbon-halogen bonds (e.g. C-F, C-Cl, C-Br) absorb strongly
at infrared wavelengths and this is why halogenated organic
compounds are strong greenhouse gases.
The effectiveness of these compounds as
greenhouse gases depends on two factors:

(i) the number of carbon-halogen bonds in the

molecule and
(ii) the atmospheric lifetime of the molecule.
 PFCs have lifetimes of the order of thousands of
years while CFCs and Halons persist for typically 50-
100 years.
 By contrast HFCs and HCFCs have relatively short
atmospheric lifetimes ranging typically from a few
months to a decade (depending on the particular
compound).
 6. Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6)
sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)- one of the most potent greenhouse gases known.

 Its potency stems from its intense absorption and

its extremely long atmospheric lifetime of 3200
years.
 SF6 is present in small amounts in fluorites and
degassing from these minerals provides a small
natural source which results in a natural
background concentration of 0.01 ppt.
 SF6 is a useful industrial chemical used as an
insulating gas in electrical switching equipment.
 7. Ozone (O3)

 not emitted into the atmosphere. Ozone is

generated in-situ in the atmosphere from
two processes:
 photolysis of molecular oxygen (O2) which
gives oxygen atoms (O) which then add to
molecular oxygen to give ozone (O3) and
 oxidation of organic compounds (from
natural and man-made sources) in the
presence of nitrogen oxides (NOx)
 In discussions of the climatic impact of human perturbations of
atmospheric ozone levels a clear distinction must be made
between ozone in the upper atmosphere (stratospheric ozone),
which has decreased as a result of human activities, and ozone
in the lower atmosphere (tropospheric ozone) which has
increased as a result of human activities.
 Finally, in contrast to all other greenhouse gases considered
here, the atmospheric lifetime of ozone is short (of the order of
days or weeks, depending on local conditions) and hence its
concentration responds quickly to changes in atmospheric
conditions.
 Ozone concentrations in the lower atmosphere are typically 10-
100 ppb with levels at the low end of the range being
characteristic of remote pristine environments and levels at the
high end of the range being typical of polluted urban air
masses.
 The depletion of stratospheric ozone during the period 1979-2000
(caused by the release of CFCs and subsequent chemical reactions)
has led to a negative radiative forcing of climate.
 International agreements are now in place which should eliminate
the emission of CFCs over the next few decades.
 It is expected that the stratospheric ozone layer will recover during
the twenty-first century and that the magnitude of the negative
radiative forcing associated with stratospheric ozone loss will
decrease with time.
 It is believed that the levels of ozone in the troposphere have
increased by 30-40% since 1750 due to increased emission of organic
compounds and NOx. This increased concentration of tropospheric
ozone has contributed a positive radiative forcing.
 The forcing associated with tropospheric ozone varies substantially
by region and season and will respond quickly to changes in emissions
of ozone forming compounds
 Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions
 Increasing emissions of greenhouse gases due to
human activities worldwide have led to a
substantial increase in atmospheric concentrations
of long-lived and other greenhouse gases.
 Every country around the world emits greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere, meaning the root cause
of climate change is truly global in scope.
 Some countries produce far more greenhouse gases
than others, and several factors—such as economic
activity (including the composition and efficiency
of the economy), population, income level, land
use, and climatic conditions—can influence a
country’s emissions levels.
 Each greenhouse gas has a different lifetime (how long it stays in
the atmosphere) and a different ability to trap heat in our
atmosphere.
 To allow different gases to be compared and added together,
emissions are converted into carbon dioxide equivalents.
 This step uses each gas’s 100-year global warming potential, which
measures how much a given amount of the gas is estimated to
contribute to global warming over a period of 100 years after being
emitted. CO2 is assigned a global warming potential equal to 1.
 This analysis uses global warming potentials from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Second
Assessment Report.
 In that report, methane has a global warming potential of 21, which
means a ton of methane emissions contributes 21 times as much
warming as a ton of CO2 emissions over 100 years, and that ton of
methane emissions is therefore equal to 21 tons of CO2 equivalents.
See the table for comparison with global warming potentials from
IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-
report/ar5/).
 Key Points
 • In 2010, estimated worldwide emissions from human
activities totaled nearly 46 billion metric tons of
greenhouse gases, expressed as carbon dioxide
equivalents. This represents a 35 percent increase from
1990 (see Figures 1 and 2). These numbers represent
net emissions, which include the effects of land use
and forestry.
 • Between 1990 and 2010, global emissions of all major
greenhouse gases increased (see Figure 1). Net
emissions of carbon dioxide increased by 42 percent,
which is particularly important because carbon dioxide
accounts for about three-fourths of total global
emissions. Nitrous oxide emissions increased the least—
9 percent—while emissions of methane increased by 15
percent. Emissions of fluorinated gases more than
doubled.
Source: EPA, 2016
 Energy production and use (including fuels used by vehicles)
represent the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions
worldwide (about 71 percent of the total in 2010), followed
by agriculture (13 percent in 2010) (see Figure 2). While
land-use change and forestry represent a net sink for
emissions in the United States, absorbing carbon dioxide
and offsetting emissions from other sources (see the U.S.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions indicator), these activities are a
net source of emissions on a global scale, largely because of
deforestation.1
 CO2 emissions are increasing faster in some parts of the
world (for example, Asia) than in others (see Figure 3). The
majority of emissions come from three regions: Asia,
Europe, and the United States, which together accounted
for 88 percent of total global emissions in 2012.
Greenhouse Effect
 History of the scientific understanding of the greenhouse
effect can be traced back to Jean Baptiste-Joseph de
Fourier in 1827.
 Fourier suggested that the atmosphere allows short
wavelength radiation from the Sun to reach and warm the
Earth's surface but blocks emission of longer wavelength
radiation which would cool the Earth.
 Fourier compared this effect to that of the glass in a
greenhouse (hence "greenhouse effect") and predicted that
climate could be influenced by human activities.
 It is now known that prevention of the loss of warm air via
convection is the main factor by which heat is retained in a
greenhouse.
 However, for historical reasons, the terms "greenhouse
effect" and "greenhouse gases" are still used when
describing radiative trapping of heat in the atmosphere.
 1859 John Tyndall measured the infra-red (heat) trapping ability of
water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane and suggested that ice
ages were caused by variations of the atmospheric levels of these
gases.
 1896 Svante Arrhenius noted the release of large amounts of carbon
dioxide by the burning of fossil fuel and estimated that a doubling of
atmospheric carbon dioxide would warm the Earth by 5-6 °C
(current climate models predict a 1.5 – 4.5 °C rise from doubling of
carbon dioxide).
 1957 Roger Revelle and Hans Suess pointed out that the build-up of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere constituted a large scale
geophysical experiment whose consequences were unknown. The
following year (1958) was designated as the International
Geophysical Year and saw the start of an ongoing program of
continuous measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at
Mauna Loa, Hawaii, by Charles Keeling which have showed that the
levels of carbon dioxide are rising steadily (from 315 ppm in 1958 to
370 ppm in 2001).
 It has been known for over a hundred years that water
vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane naturally
present in the atmosphere trap heat in the
atmosphere.
 It is relatively straightforward to estimate the
magnitude of this "natural greenhouse effect".
 The only mechanism by which the Earth can cool itself
is via emission of infrared radiation into space. At
infrared frequencies the Earth behaves like a black
body (when seen in IR light even "white" clouds and
snow appear "black").
 Without the natural greenhouse effect the planet
would be permanently frozen and devoid of life.
 The Natural Greenhouse Effect
 The greenhouse effect is the rise in
temperature that the Earth
experiences because certain gases in
the atmosphere trap energy that
comes from the sun.
 These gases are usually called
greenhouse gases since they behave
much like the glass panes in a
greenhouse.
 The glass panels of the greenhouse
let in the light but keep heat from
escaping and this is similar to the
effect these gasses have on earth.
The Enhanced Greenhouse Effect
 Some human activities also produce greenhouse gases and these gases
keep increasing in the atmosphere.
 The change in the balance of the greenhouse gases has significant effects
on the entire planet. Burning fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas -
releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Cutting down and burning
trees also produces a lot of carbon dioxide.
 A group of greenhouse gases called the chlorofluorocarbons have been
used in aerosols, such as hairspray cans, fridges and in making foam
plastics.
 Since there are more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, more
heat is trapped, which makes the Earth warmer.
 This is known as global warming. A lot of scientists agree that man's
activities are making the natural greenhouse effect stronger. If we carry on
polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, it will have very
dangerous effects on the Earth.
 Today, the increase in the Earth's temperature is increasing with
unprecedented speed.
 To understand just how quickly global warming is
accelerating, consider that during the entire 20th
century, the average global temperature
increased by about 0.6 degrees Celsius.
 Using computer climate models, scientists
estimate that by the year 2100 the average global
temperature will increase by 1.4 degrees to 5.8
degrees Celsius.
 Global Warming
 "Global warming" refers to the enhanced greenhouse
effect expected to result from an increase in
atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases resulting
from emissions associated with human activities.
 Absorption of infrared irradiation by greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere has been well documented by satellite
observations.
 Water vapor, ozone, and methane are also strong
absorbers of infrared radiation.
 The presence of these natural greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere prevents the direct escape of terrestrial
infrared radiation into space.
 Increases in the atmospheric concentrations of
greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor,
methane, and ozone will act to further hinder the escape
of terrestrial infrared radiation and hence warm the
Earth's surface.
 Certain industrial gases such as sulfur
hexafluoride (SF6) and the chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) are powerful absorbers in the atmospheric
window region and have a particularly
pronounced greenhouse effect.
The Effects of Global Warming
 With more heat trapped on Earth,
the planet will become warmer,
which means the weather all over
Earth will change.
 Since the conditions we are living
in are perfect for life, a large rise in
temperature could be disastrous for
us and for any other living creatures
on Earth.
 it is difficult for scientists to say
how big the changes will be and
where the worst effects will occur.
 The Weather
 The effects will vary in different parts of the world: some
places will become drier and others will become wetter.
 Although most areas will be warmer, some areas will become
cooler.
 There may be many storms, floods and drought, but we do not
know which areas of the world will be affected.
 All over the world, these weather changes will affect the
kinds of crop that can be grown.
 Plants, animals, and even people may find it difficult to
survive in different conditions.
 Sea Level

 Higher temperatures will make the water of the

seas and oceans expand. Ice melting in the
Antarctic and Greenland will flow into the sea.
 All over the world, sea levels may rise, perhaps
by as much as 20 to 40 cm, by the beginning of
the next century.
 Higher sea levels will threaten the low-lying
coastal areas of the Netherlands and
Bangladesh.
 Throughout the world, millions of people and
areas of land will be at danger from flooding.
 Many people will have to leave their homes and
large areas of farmland will be ruined because
of floods.
 FARMING
 The changes in the weather will affect the types of
crops grown in different parts of the world.
 Some crops, such as wheat and rice, grow better in
higher temperatures, but other plants, such as
maize and sugarcane, do not.
 Changes in the amount of rainfall will also affect
how many plants grow.
 The effect of a change in the weather on plant
growth may lead to some countries not having
enough food. Brazil, parts of Africa, south-east Asia,
and China will be affected the most and many
people could suffer from hunger.
 Plants and Animals
 It has taken millions of years for life to become
used to the conditions on Earth.
 As weather and temperature changes, the homes
of plants and animals will be affected all over the
world.
 For example, polar bears and seals will have to find
new land for hunting and living if the ice in the
Arctic melts.
 Many animals and plants may not be able to cope
with these changes and could die.
 This could cause the loss of some animal and plant
species in certain or all areas of the world.
 PEOPLE
 The changes in climate will affect everyone, but some
populations will be at greater risk.
 For example, countries whose coastal regions have a
large population, such as Egypt and China, may see
whole populations move inland to avoid flood risk
areas.
 The effect on people will depend on how well we can
adapt to the changes and how much we can do to
reduce climate change in the world.
 Assessment Task
 Before answering the following questions, you have to first watch the
YouTube video entitled, Greenhouse Effect, at the given link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ojaDMadZXU

Write a 3 to 8 sentences short-response/essay for each question below.

1) What new ideas about Greenhouse Effect did you learn that changed
the way you think?
2) What is the importance of knowing the status level of the different
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere on Earth?
3) Do you believe in climate change and global warming? Why or why
not? Cite examples you observe to support your ideas.