More Cool Facts

The greenhouse effect, discovered way back in 1896 is not only a natural process but it’s kept our planet warm enough to support all types of life for billions of years. As such there’s nothing wrong with the greenhouse effect but as the amount of greenhouse gases increase (thanks to humans burning so many fossil fuels) more and more heat is trapped in the atmosphere, causing weather problems, droughts and other environmental issues the world over.

This is a man made problem fuelled by greed and excessive consumption. It’s a sad fact and one that we have to accept if we’re going to bring change. Next we’re going to take a look at the earth’s sky in more detail.

Our Sky

The sky above us seems endless, but analysed more accurately and if you were to imagine the earth to be like an orange, the atmosphere would be no thicker than the peel of the orange (in fact it’s probably thinner).

Scientists have shown it to be split into five major parts and starting from the bottom they look like this:

• Trophosphere (Airplanes usually fly in this layer)
• Stratosphere (high altitude balloons can fly this high)
• Mesosphere
• Thermosphere (Space shuttles and meteors are usually seen in this layer)
• Exosphere (commonly associated with Aurora lights)

The Process

The overall process is very straight forward and works pretty much the same as a real greenhouse in that it takes heat in, traps some of it, whilst other parts of it are lost.

• Sun rays carry heat and light to Earth
• Ice mirrors i.e. shiny surfaces on the earth e.g. Ice caps bounce around 4% of the suns rays back into space.
• Another 50% of the overall solar energy and rays never even make it to the Earth’s surface as they are bounced back or blocked by the clouds and atmosphere.
• The heat and energy that does make it to the surface warms the Earth which in turn gives off heat. Some of this heat escapes back to space but greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap the rest and retain the heat which should have really left

With an overall 25% increase of greenhouse gases within our atmosphere since 1850 you’re hopefully now getting a much better understanding of not only greenhouse gases but how the Earth is currently struggling with the heat energy it’s receiving.

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