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How does Oil affect the Environment?
Fossil fuels are burnt on a huge scale.
What are Greenhouse Gases?
How do Carbon Dioxide
and other Greenhouse Gases
cause Global Warming?
The temperature of our
planet is a balance
between
the amount of heat it receives in
the day from the Sun
and the amount of heat given out at
night into space.
In the day, energy from the Sun reaches the Earth in the form
of
electromagnetic
radiation (this includes heat and light).
The surface temperature (and the atmospheric temperature)
of the Earth rises in
the day. At night, heat
energy from the
Earth is lost to
space. This heat energy is a fairly narrow
range
of electromagnetic radiation
called infra-red
radiation.
Carbon dioxide, methane,
water vapour and nitrous oxides
absorb infra-red radiation in the same range
that
is
given off by the Earth at night. More carbon dioxide
in the
atmosphere means more heat is absorbed,
and less can escape at night into
space. The overall effect
is that the
Earth receives more heat in
the day
than it can lose at night, so the temperature rises.
The same
thing happens in a greenhouse
where glass
instead of
carbon dioxide is used to prevent the heat
escaping
at night. So, carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour
and nitrous oxides have been
called greenhouse gases.
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