{"id":55021,"date":"2020-09-13T14:02:09","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T19:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55021"},"modified":"2020-09-13T14:02:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T19:02:09","slug":"climate-explained-why-carbon-dioxide-has-such-outsized-influence-on-earths-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55021","title":{"rendered":"Climate explained: why carbon dioxide has such outsized influence on Earth\u2019s\u00a0climate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Climate explained: why carbon dioxide has such outsized influence on Earth\u2019s\u00a0climate<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I heard that carbon dioxide makes up 0.04% of the world\u2019s atmosphere. Not 0.4% or 4%, but 0.04%! How can it be so important in global warming if it\u2019s such a small percentage?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am often asked how carbon dioxide can have an important effect on global climate when its concentration is so small \u2013 just\u00a00.041% of Earth\u2019s atmosphere<\/a>. And human activities are responsible for\u00a0just 32% of that amount<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I study the importance of atmospheric gases for\u00a0air pollution and climate change<\/a>. The key to carbon dioxide\u2019s strong influence on climate is its ability to absorb heat emitted from our planet\u2019s surface, keeping it from escaping out to space.<\/p>\n

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The \u2018Keeling Curve,\u2019 named for scientist Charles David Keeling, tracks the accumulation of carbon dioxide in Earth\u2019s atmosphere, measured in parts per million.<\/span>\u00a0Scripps Institution of Oceanography<\/a>,\u00a0CC BY<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Early greenhouse science<\/strong><\/p>\n

The scientists who first identified carbon dioxide\u2019s importance for climate in the 1850s were also surprised by its influence. Working separately,\u00a0John Tyndall<\/a>\u00a0in England and\u00a0Eunice Foote<\/a>\u00a0in the United States found that carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane all absorbed heat, while more abundant gases did not.<\/p>\n

Scientists had already calculated that the Earth was about 59 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius)\u00a0warmer than it should be<\/a>, given the amount of sunlight reaching its surface. The best explanation for that discrepancy was that the atmosphere retained heat to warm the planet.<\/p>\n

Tyndall and Foote showed that nitrogen and oxygen, which together account for 99% of the atmosphere, had essentially no influence on Earth\u2019s temperature because they did not absorb heat. Rather, they found that gases present in much smaller concentrations were entirely responsible for maintaining temperatures that made the Earth habitable, by trapping heat to create\u00a0a natural greenhouse effect<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate explained: why carbon dioxide has such outsized influence on Earth\u2019s\u00a0climate I heard that carbon dioxide makes up 0.04% of the world\u2019s atmosphere. Not 0.4% or 4%, but 0.04%! How can it be so important in global warming if it\u2019s such a small percentage? I am often asked how carbon dioxide can have an important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4556,3193,140,141,386,30307,5316,8487],"class_list":["post-55021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-atmosphere","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-jason-west","tag-methane","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55022,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55021\/revisions\/55022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}