The greenhouse effect starts of with the sun. The sun then radiates short wave radiation which is absorbed by the earths surface. It is then re-radiated as long wave radiation and absorbed this time by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The 5 main gases that these are absorbed by are: carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, halocarbons and nitrous oxide.
This graph shows the temperature rise over the last 10 centuries. As you can see the temperature is relatively level until it gets to the 19th century and then the temperature starts to rise dramatically and also then the co2 levels also rise at around the same rat. This shows that if the average temperature is rising, also the amount of co2 is rising.
This slide shows the different ways that the sea level is rising. The main contributor as you can see is the melting of glaciers this is not just a worry because the sea levels could be rising but a worry because it means animals such as polar bears that live on these glaciers are loosing there homes. This is closely followed by thermal expansion however. Thermal expanssion is when the water heats up and expands and this will simply take up more room. The other two factors that don’t contribute as much are melting of ice sheets and ice loss from greenland.
This slide shows the main greenhouse gases in global warming. As you can see carbon dioxide makes up more than 50% of the gases. This is followed by methane which takes up 16.3% of the gases and then halocarbons which makes up 11.6% of the gas. Ozone is another main gas and lastly nitrous oxide which makes up 5.4% of the gases. These are only the five main gases though, there are actually many more.
