In the case of a greenhouse it's windows are transparent to visible light letting it in but inside it strikes solid objects and is converted to IR light (heat) with glass is partially opaque to IR, it the same reason your car heats up so much when left in the Sun.
The atmosphere work in a similar way it lets light in and is converted when it strikes the ground, the atmosphere in general loses heat more readily, but greenhouse gases like water vapor, CO2 and Methane slow the process just a little, we have a fairly cool planet, how warm it could get is just a matter of looking at Venus, but we have about 33c added to our temperature by our greenhouse gases (at preindustrial levels) of which CO2 is only responsible for roughly 10%. We have added ~40% to CO2 levels and temperature has risen ~1c. CO2 has risen from 280ppm to the current 398ppm (a rise 118ppm) since ~1850.
But at current rates of rise we will rise another 172ppm in the next 86 years and it's frankly highly unlikely we will stay at the current rate of rise for much longer so the actual rise will be higher, best estimates at the moment suggest 650-700ppm by the end of the century, this is well on the way to prehistoric levels that had the planet warm enough to have no icecaps and much higher sea level, of course ice caps don't melt that quickly but we can expect to see an increase in their contribution to sea level rise with current estimates put this at a 1-2m rise by the end of the century, which only requires a few percent of Antarctic and Greenland to melt to become a reality.
The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. They are all formed naturally on Earth. Many are becoming more prevalent in modern society because of increased emissions. Global warming occurs when the thermal radiations coming from the Sun are trapped within the atmosphere of the Earth by various greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane.
Kano is correct. Many people believe that greenhouses are warm because their glass is opaque to longwave infrared. The problem with this idea is that about 100 years ago an experiment was performed by the physicist Robert W. Wood where he built a greenhouse with windows TRANSPARENT to longwave IR, and the greenhouse got just as warm.
No its different greenhouses work by preventing convection, leave the door and windows open and they cool down
the effect is the same except one has glass, the other has gases instead of glass.
see link for % or gases, see NASA for more detail. Convection has little to do with it, heating still occurs with and without wind.
Do greenhouses work the same way as Earth when it goes through the greenhouse effect thingy? What percentage of EACH greenhouse gases makes up the atmosphere? What effect does carbon dioxide have on the greenhouse effect? How is it related to global warming? I have a project about the greenhouse effect due friday + a three page report, and I have no idea what to put on my poster/report. >_< any suggestions?
