The greenhouse effect is ruining our planet.

() Believe me, I watched it on TV last night is what I

overheard from the conversation by an elderly couple sitting in front of me in the bus. Nothing
could be further from the truth is what I thought. It happened last week during one of my daily bus
trips to university. Obviously, I did not say anything to the couple but that event made me think in-
depth about the matter the following days.
The greenhouse effect is a natural process which is vital for the living beings in our planet. In short,
without the greenhouse gases the life in Earth would not exist such as it is understood today.
Nevertheless, it has been perceived as a negative thing by the general public over the last few years.
This may be due either to an inappropriate use of the term by the mass media or to a general lack of
knowledge concerning this issue that could be misleading. Anyway, the point of this article is not to
find out the origin of the bad reputation of greenhouse gases. The aim of this feature is to shed
some light on what the greenhouse effect is and how it is related to climate change. In other words, I
am going to try to express here what I would like to have explained to that charming couple that sat
in front of me in the bus last week.
In broad terms, when the radiation emitted by the sun reaches the Earths atmosphere, two things
happen. First of all, one part of the radiation is reflected by the particles present in the atmosphere
and goes back to the outer space while, on the other hand, the rest of the radiation passes through
the gaseous layer that covers our planet and scatters across its surface. Although one portion of the
incident solar radiation is reflected by some parts of the Earths surface (e.g. snow, ice, and frozen
ground), most of the radiation is absorbed by the ground. As a result of that our planet gets warm.


Source: iAGRAM (www.iagram.com).

Subsequently, as the Earths surface becomes warmer, it emits thermal radiation in the form of heat.
When this heat reaches the inner part of the atmosphere a small part passes through it and goes
back to the outer space, while most of the heat remain trapped by the gaseous layer and is re-
The shorter the
wavelength, the
higher the energy
transported by
the radiation.
emitted back to earth. This whole process is known as greenhouse effect. This effect happens
because the gases of the atmosphere act different depending on the wavelength of the radiation,
allowing the short wavelength radiation to pass through it and trapping the long wavelength
radiation. That is to say, it allows the solar radiation (short
wavelength) to pass through and traps the Earths radiation
(long wavelength) preventing it from being released into the
outer space. This situation is essential for making possible life
in our planet since the temperature variation that the Earth
suffers between day and night is softened by the greenhouse
effect. Otherwise, the surface temperature of the planet
would be around 30 C below the actual one due to the loss of
heat during the night-time. However, anthropogenic activities
such as the intensive use of fossil fuels have caused the
release of huge quantities of greenhouse gases over the last decades thereby altering their natural
proportion in the atmosphere. As a consequence, the natural greenhouse effect has been strongly
intensified thus increasing the average global temperature and eventually boosting climate change.
Having reached this point, lets take a look at the main responsible gases for the greenhouse effect
and their most common sources. In the first place we can find carbon dioxide (CO
2
). This gas is
released to the atmosphere as a result of different natural processes such as the biogeochemical
carbon cycle, the animal and plant respiration, and volcanic eruptions. Nevertheless, carbon dioxide
is heavily emitted as a consequence of human activities, especially because of the intensive use of
fossil fuels. Secondly, we find methane (CH
4
). Substantial quantities of methane are naturally
emitted from wetlands but its atmospheric concentration has considerably increased due to the
anthropogenic exploitation of natural resources such as natural gas, coal or oil. The next one on the
list is nitrous oxide (N
2
O). Despite some nitrous dioxide
emissions result from natural biological processes, it is
mainly generated as a sub product derived from fertilizers
and other chemicals involved in agricultural activities.
Finally, among fluorinated or F-gases, we can find a wide
variety of gases such as hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs), per
fluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF
6
). One
particularity about fluorinated gases is that they are not
produced by any natural source but only by human
activity. These gases are widely used for refrigeration
systems and different chemical industry processes. There
are other gases that take part in the greenhouse effect
such as water vapour (H
2
O) and ozone (O
3
), but they are set aside due to their short atmospheric
lifetime and, in the case of water vapour, to the fact that its global concentration does not directly
depend on human emissions (NRC, 2010).
The contribution of greenhouse gases to the greenhouse effect, and thereby to global warming,
mainly depends on two factors: the potential to trap heat and the atmospheric lifetime of each gas.
This warming effect of greenhouse gases over a given time period usually taken as 100 years is
defined by the IPCC as Global Warming Potential (2007 IPCC AR4).
Source: 2007 IPCC AR4.
Global greenhouse
gas emissions



































Source: 2007 IPCC AR4.

Taking into account all these facts, it is time to finally address the subject in question. Are
greenhouse gases causing climate change? The answer is no. As stated at the beginning of this
article, the greenhouse effect is one of the key factors that make life possible in our planet. The
problem is not caused by the greenhouse gases themselves but by the huge amount of these gases
that has been released over the last decades altering their natural concentrations in the
atmosphere. That being said, we may slightly re-pose the initial question. Are high concentrations of
greenhouse gases causing climate change? One step closer but it is not entirely true yet. Certainly,
high concentrations of greenhouse gases are contributing to an increase in the global average
temperature thus promoting climate change. Nevertheless, it is not the only factor responsible for
this phenomenon. In fact, other climate changes have previously occurred along the history of the
planet due to natural factors such as periodic variations in the solar radiation. However, the previous
climate changes were gradual processes that took thousands of years. On the contrary, as a
consequence of the current climate change, we have observed significant global climatic variations
in a relatively small period of time. Hence, the natural climatic change process is happening more
quickly. Now then, lets try it once more. Are high concentrations of greenhouse gases contributing
to accelerate climate change? In that case, I cannot do nothing but totally agree with the statement.

References
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4): Climate Change 2007
o Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
(http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ts.html)
o Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
(http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ts.html)
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/)
National Research Council (NRC). Advancing the Science of Climate Change. National Research Council, The
National Academies Press: Washington, DC, USA, 2010.
Carbon dioxide (CO
2
)
CO
2
has a GWP of 1 and serves as a baseline for other GWP values.
More than half of the CO
2
emitted today remains in the atmosphere for about 100
years, while some fraction (about 20%) remains for thousands of years.
Methane (CH
4
)
CH
4
has a GWP more than 30 times higher than CO
2
for a 100-year time scale.
CH
4
emitted today lasts for about a decade in the atmosphere, on average.
Nitrous Oxide (N
2
O)
N
2
O has a GWP more than 250 times higher than CO
2
for a 100-year time scale.
N
2
O emitted today remains in the atmosphere for more than 100 years, on average.
Fluorinated gases (F-gases)
F-gases have different GWP values, ranging from about 1500 (HFC-134a) to more
than 20000 (SF
6
) times higher than CO
2
for a 100-year time scale.
F-gases emitted today remain in the atmosphere for different periods of time,
ranging from about a decade (HFC-134a) to more than 3000 years (SF
6
).