Related papers: Nitrous Oxide and Climate
The atmospheric temperatures and concentrations of Earth's five most important, greenhouse gases, H$_2$O, CO$_2$, O$_3$, N$_2$O and CH$_4$ control the cloud-free, thermal radiative flux from the Earth to outer space. Over 1/3 million lines…
Carbon dioxide is one of the major contributors to the radiative forcing, increasing both the temperature and the humidity of Earth's atmosphere. If the stellar irradiance increases and water becomes abundant in the stratosphere of an…
The forcings due to changing concentrations of Earth's five most important, naturally occurring greenhouse gases, H$_2$O, CO$_2$, O$_3$, N$_2$O and CH$_4$ as well as CF$_4$ and SF$_6$ were evaluated for the case of a cloud-free atmosphere.…
We discuss how greenhouse gases affect radiation transfer in Earth's atmosphere. We explain how greenhouse gases like water vapor or carbon dioxide, differ from non-greenhouse gases like nitrogen or oxygen. Using simple thermodynamics and…
Although non-greenhouse gases can vary substantially in abundance in Earth-like atmospheres, their climatic influences remain insufficiently understood. To investigate how such gases regulate climate, we vary the abundance of N$_2$ as a…
Spectroscopic measurements at top of atmosphere are uniquely capable of attributing changes in Earth's outgoing infrared radiation field to specific greenhouse gasses. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) placed in orbit in 2002 has…
The clear sky instantaneous radiative forcings of the 14 halogenated gases previously shown to have the largest contribution to global warming, were found. The calculation used the absorption cross sections for the halogenated gases which…
Radiative power balance of a planet in the solar system is delineated. The terrestrial powers are transformed to average global flux in an effective atmospheric column (EAC) approximation, its components are delineated. The estimated and…
Soil has been recognized as an indirect driver of global warming by regulating atmospheric greenhouse gases. However, in view of the higher heat capacity and CO2 concentration in soil than those in atmosphere, the direct contributions of…
As a consequence of greenhouse forcing, all state of the art general circulation models predict a positive temperature trend that is greater for the troposphere than the surface. This predicted positive trend increases in value with…
Recent analyses indicate that the amount of atmospheric CO2 required to cause dangerous climate change is at most 450 ppm, and likely less than that. Reductions of non-CO2 climate forcings can provide only moderate, albeit important,…
Carbon dioxide (CO2) increase has been well documented, and global net primary production is of importance to a variety of ecological topics. Since CO2 increases primary production in laboratory experiments, the global effects of increasing…
Atmospheric ozone plays an important role on the temperature structure of the atmosphere. However, it has not been included in previous studies on the effect of an increasing solar radiation on the Earth's climate. Here we study the climate…
Improving observations of ocean heat content show that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum. The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 \pm 0.15 W/m2…
When large surface areas of the Earth are altered, radiative forcing due to changes in surface reflectance can drive climate change. Yet to achieve the necessary scale to remove the substantial amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere…
The state of earth's climate is constrained by well-known physical principles such as energy balance and the conservation of energy. Increased greenhouse gas concentrations affect the atmospheric optical depth, and physical consistency…
Water-rich planets such as Earth are expected to become eventually uninhabitable, because liquid water does not remain stable at the surface as surface temperatures increase with the solar luminosity over time. Whether a large increase of…
Based on new radiative transfer numerical evaluations, we reconsider an argument presented by Schack in 1972 that says that saturation of the absorption of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sets in as soon as the…
Quantitative estimates of the contributions of the anthropogenic forcing, characterized by changes in the radiative forcing of atmospheric greenhouse gases (CO2, in particular), and solar activity variations to the trends of the global…
When evaluating the effect of CO2 changes on the earth's climate, it is widely assumed that instantaneous radiative forcing from a doubling of a given CO2 concentration (IRF2xCO2) is constant and that variances in climate sensitivity arise…