Tagged: radiation

Greenhouse Effect: Grade 9 understanding for IGCSE Biology 4.13 4.14 4.15

The Greenhouse Effect is the name given to the way in which the earth’s atmosphere acts to warm up the planet.  The earth and the moon gain almost exactly the same incident radiation from the sun and yet average temperature on the earth is stable at around 14 degrees Celsius.  On the moon the temperature fluctuates wildly from 1oo degrees Celsius during the day to minus 153 degrees Celsius at night.   Life would be impossible in such extreme and variable conditions and so the greenhouse effect is definitely a “good thing” for life on our planet.

How does the greenhouse effect work?

Well the main idea here is that there are certain gases in the atmosphere that can trap the infrared radiation that the earth emits and prevent it escaping the atmosphere.  These greenhouse gases are warmed as they absorb the infrared and so the atmosphere heats up.

greenhouseeffectdiagram

Remember that because the sun is so hot, it emits radiation at a much higher frequency.  This is mostly in the “visible light” part of the spectrum together with some ultraviolet.  The gases in the atmosphere cannot trap visible light (air is transparent as you have probably noticed) and so most of the solar radiation passes through the atmosphere and hits the earth.

greenhouseeffect

Which gases can act as greenhouse gases?

The two most prevalent gases in the atmosphere are nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) and neither is able to trap infrared so cannot act as a greenhouse gas.  The principle greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are

greenhouse-gases-most-common

  • carbon dioxide
  • water vapour
  • methane
  • ozone
  • nitrous oxide

So what’s the problem?

Well of course the problem is that human activities over the past century or so have altered the composition of the atmosphere so that the concentration of greenhouse gases has risen.  This has meant more heat is trapped and climate systems are altered in consequence.  This enhanced-greenhouse effect is the problem and I will look at this in the next post…..

total-heat-content

Air pollution and climate change: Grade 9 understanding for IGCSE Biology (part 1) 4.13 4.14 4.15

Climate change remains one of the more controversial topics in the IGCSE Biology specification.  Just in the past few weeks, the USA (one of the finest nations on the planet) has elected as their President someone who has stated on record that he believes in some giant conspiracy theory about climate science centred around the Chinese….

m9ng9j5x7cpt5hcdu0jra747ruw4thwlwbsttx2fvahjqg2qs_8glorwcqgxgq8wje5bowtlvihbdryargjchy7bquaxd9t-enioavfxlfjwqnvfxr9whcxul6canw_0q8qghoi9

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists do not support this interpretation of the facts.  They are able to provide evidence of rapid climate change over the past few decades and link this to human-induced changes in the composition of the atmosphere due to pollution.  When these facts are linked by a sensible scientific theory that proposes how and why certain gases might lead to an increased warming effect in the atmosphere (the so-called greenhouse effect) the evidence in support of human-induced climate change becomes compelling.  Keeping US manufacturing competitive is important of course, but not at the expense of the enormous environmental and financial costs of allowing our pollution of the atmosphere to continue unchecked.  I am not sure I will be able to convince President-Elect Trump (he probably doesn’t read my blog in any case) but perhaps I can show you the kind of understanding needed to generate A* answers in GCSE questions on this topic…?

download

I am going to organise this work into several sections and will post on each topic in the coming week….

  1. What is the evidence for climate change?
  2. What is the greenhouse effect?
  3. How are human activities altering the make up of the atmosphere?
  4. What are the predicted consequences of climate change in the coming years?