The gases that have the property of absorbing infrared radiations from the Earth's surface and radiating it back to the Earth's surface, leading to a Greenhouse phenomenon, are known as Greenhouse gases. Methane, Carbon Dioxide and Water Vapour are some of the leading examples of Greenhouse gases. These gases affect Earth's energy balance and are found to occur naturally. However, urbanisation and industrialisation have significantly increased the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere. Before going into details of the subject, let us first clear our understanding of the greenhouse effect.
Earth's surface takes and absorbs solar radiations that come from the Sun. The Earth absorbs part of these radiations, and the remaining energy is reflected as long-wave heat radiations. The reflected radiations are partially absorbed by greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere and reflected the Earth, which heats Earth's lower atmospheric layers along with Earth's surface. The complete process is referred to as the "Greenhouse Effect". This process is responsible for maintaining a comfortable temperature on the Earth's surface.
Since the entire Greenhouse phenomenon is a natural process that is continuously going for ages. Several important questions like - why are we more concerned about these gases nowadays? Why every country is planning to combat Greenhouse gases and why governments across the globe are shifting towards green energy?, have been raised at various national and global platforms. Human-made greenhouse gas is the single answer to all these questions. Man-made greenhouse gases disturbed the ecological balance of the Earth by pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Increased urbanisation, industrialisation, and increased use of fossil-fuel-driven vehicles have supplied an enormous amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases, which has significantly increased the temperature of Earth.
However, the installation of air conditioners is a solution to this problem which can reduce the room temperature and make humans comfortable, but the problem is not limited to the room temperature alone. Man-made greenhouse gases have disturbed the Earth's temperature equilibrium. The process is leading to global warming and is causing climate change.
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Global warming and climate change are interchangeably used to address the aspects of climate change. But it must me keep in mind that both the terms are entirely different, however, related to each other. Global warming refers to the rise in temperature due to an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere whereas, climate change is the long term change in Earth’s temperature that includes wind patterns, temperature and precipitation.
Besides the common impacts of global warming, we discussed in the previous section, scientists have also predicted some regional impacts of climate change. Let us have a brief look at these impacts:
As per US Environmental Protection Agency, Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Fluorinated gases are the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Let us try to understand the main sources of all these gases.
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There are numerous measures to combat greenhouse emission challenges. Few of the measures are now strictly followed by the world to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Let's have a look at the following measures:
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