Greenhouse gas
Greenhouse gases are the gases in an atmosphere that trap heat, raising the surface temperature of astronomical bodies such as Earth. Unlike other gases, greenhouse gases absorb the radiations that a planet emits, resulting in the greenhouse effect. The Earth is warmed by sunlight, causing its surface to radiate heat, which is then mostly absorbed by greenhouse gases. Without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the average temperature of Earth's surface would be about, rather than the present average of. Human-induced warming has been increasing at a rate that is unprecedented in the instrumental record, reaching 0.27 °C per decade over 2015–2024. This high rate of warming is caused by a combination of greenhouse gas emissions being at an all-time high of 53.6±5.2 Gt CO2e yr−1 over the last decade, as well as reductions in the strength of aerosol cooling.
The five most abundant greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere, listed in decreasing order of average global mole fraction, are: water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone. Other greenhouse gases of concern include chlorofluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride|, and nitrogen trifluoride|. Water vapor causes about half of the greenhouse effect, acting in response to other gases as a climate change feedback.
Human activities since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have increased carbon dioxide by over 50%, and methane levels by 150%. Carbon dioxide emissions are causing about three-quarters of global warming, while methane emissions cause most of the rest. The vast majority of carbon dioxide emissions by humans come from the burning of fossil fuels, with remaining contributions from agriculture and industry. Methane emissions originate from agriculture, fossil fuel production, waste, and other sources. The carbon cycle takes thousands of years to fully absorb from the atmosphere, while methane lasts in the atmosphere for an average of only 12 years.
Natural flows of carbon happen between the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems, the ocean, and sediments. These flows have been fairly balanced over the past one million years, although greenhouse gas levels have varied widely in the more distant past. Carbon dioxide levels are now higher than they have been for three million years. The 2023 annual update of key indicators reveals that human-induced temperature rise, greenhouse gas concentrations, and the Earth's energy imbalance have all reached new records. If current emission rates continue, then global warming will surpass sometime between 2040 and 2070. This is a level which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is "dangerous".
Properties and mechanisms
Greenhouse gases are infrared active, meaning that they absorb and emit infrared radiation in the same long wavelength range as what is emitted by the Earth's surface, clouds and atmosphere.99% of the Earth's dry atmosphere is made up of nitrogen and oxygen . Because their molecules contain two atoms of the same element, they have no asymmetry in the distribution of their electrical charges, and so are almost totally unaffected by infrared thermal radiation, with only an extremely minor effect from collision-induced absorption. A further 0.9% of the atmosphere is made up by argon, which is monatomic, and so completely transparent to thermal radiation. On the other hand, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and even less abundant trace gases account for less than 0.1% of Earth's atmosphere, but because their molecules contain atoms of different elements, there is an asymmetry in electric charge distribution which allows molecular vibrations to interact with electromagnetic radiation. This makes them infrared active, and so their presence causes greenhouse effect.
Radiative forcing
Earth absorbs some of the radiant energy received from the sun, reflects some of it as light, and reflects or radiates the rest back to space as heat. A planet's surface temperature depends on this balance between incoming and outgoing energy. When Earth's energy balance is shifted, its surface becomes warmer or cooler, leading to a variety of changes in global climate. Radiative forcing is a metric calculated in watts per square meter, which characterizes the impact of an external change in a factor that influences climate. It is calculated as the difference in top-of-atmosphere energy balance immediately caused by such an external change. A positive forcing, such as from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, means more energy arriving than leaving at the top-of-atmosphere, which causes additional warming, while negative forcing, like from sulfates forming in the atmosphere from sulfur dioxide, leads to cooling.Within the lower atmosphere, greenhouse gases exchange thermal radiation with the surface and limit radiative heat flow away from it, which reduces the overall rate of upward radiative heat transfer. The increased concentration of greenhouse gases is also cooling the upper atmosphere, as it is much thinner than the lower layers, and any heat re-emitted from greenhouse gases is more likely to travel further to space than to interact with the fewer gas molecules in the upper layers. The upper atmosphere is also shrinking as the result.
Contributions of specific gases to the greenhouse effect
Anthropogenic changes to the natural greenhouse effect are sometimes referred to as the enhanced greenhouse effect.This table shows the most important contributions to the overall greenhouse effect, without which the average temperature of Earth's surface would be about, instead of around. This table also specifies tropospheric ozone, because this gas has a cooling effect in the stratosphere, but a warming influence comparable to nitrous oxide and CFCs in the troposphere.
Special role of water vapor
Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas overall, being responsible for 41–67% of the greenhouse effect, but its global concentrations are not directly affected by human activity. While local water vapor concentrations can be affected by developments such as irrigation, it has little impact on the global scale due to its short residence time of about nine days. Indirectly, an increase in global temperatures will also increase water vapor concentrations and thus their warming effect, in a process known as water vapor feedback. It occurs because the Clausius–Clapeyron relation holds that more water vapor will be present per unit volume at elevated temperatures. Thus, local atmospheric concentration of water vapor varies from less than 0.01% in extremely cold regions up to 3% by mass in saturated air at about 32 °C.Global warming potential (GWP) and CO2 equivalents
List of all greenhouse gases
The contribution of each gas to the enhanced greenhouse effect is determined by the characteristics of that gas, its abundance, and any indirect effects it may cause. For example, the direct radiative effect of a mass of methane is about 84 times stronger than the same mass of carbon dioxide over a 20-year time frame. Since the 1980s, greenhouse gas forcing contributions are also estimated with high accuracy using IPCC-recommended expressions derived from radiative transfer models.The concentration of a greenhouse gas is typically measured in parts per million or parts per billion by volume. A concentration of 420 ppm means that 420 out of every million air molecules is a molecule. The first 30 ppm increase in concentrations took place in about 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to 1958; however the next 90 ppm increase took place within 56 years, from 1958 to 2014. Similarly, the average annual increase in the 1960s was only 37% of what it was in 2000 through 2007.
Many observations are available online in a variety of Atmospheric Chemistry Observational Databases. The table below shows the most influential long-lived, well-mixed greenhouse gases, along with their tropospheric concentrations and direct radiative forcings, as identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Abundances of these trace gases are regularly measured by atmospheric scientists from samples collected throughout the world. It excludes water vapor because changes in its concentrations are calculated as a climate change feedback indirectly caused by changes in other greenhouse gases, as well as ozone, whose concentrations are only modified indirectly by various refrigerants that cause ozone depletion. Some short-lived gases and aerosols are also excluded because of limited role and strong variation, along with minor refrigerants and other halogenated gases, which have been mass-produced in smaller quantities than those in the table. and Annex III of the 2021 IPCC WG1 Report
Factors affecting concentrations
Atmospheric concentrations are determined by the balance between sources and sinks.Airborne fraction
The proportion of an emission remaining in the atmosphere after a specified time is the "airborne fraction". The annual airborne fraction is the ratio of the atmospheric increase in a given year to that year's total emissions. The annual airborne fraction for had been stable at 0.45 for the past six decades even as the emissions have been increasing. This means that the other 0.55 of emitted is absorbed by the land and atmosphere carbon sinks within the first year of an emission. In the high-emission scenarios, the effectiveness of carbon sinks will be lower, increasing the atmospheric fraction of even though the raw amount of emissions absorbed will be higher than in the present.Atmospheric lifetime
Major greenhouse gases are well mixed and take many years to leave the atmosphere.The atmospheric lifetime of a greenhouse gas refers to the time required to restore equilibrium following a sudden increase or decrease in its concentration in the atmosphere. Individual atoms or molecules may be lost or deposited to sinks such as the soil, the oceans and other waters, or vegetation and other biological systems, reducing the excess to background concentrations. The average time taken to achieve this is the mean lifetime. This can be represented through the following formula, where the lifetime of an atmospheric species X in a one-box model is the average time that a molecule of X remains in the box.
can also be defined as the ratio of the mass of X in the box to its removal rate, which is the sum of the flow of X out of the box
,
chemical loss of X
,
and deposition of X
:
If input of this gas into the box ceased, then after time, its concentration would decrease by about 63%.
Changes to any of these variables can alter the atmospheric lifetime of a greenhouse gas. For instance, methane's atmospheric lifetime is estimated to have been lower in the 19th century than now, but to have been higher in the second half of the 20th century than after 2000. Carbon dioxide has an even more variable lifetime, which cannot be specified down to a single number. Scientists instead say that while the first 10% of carbon dioxide's airborne fraction is removed "quickly", the vast majority of the airborne fraction – 80% – lasts for "centuries to millennia". The remaining 10% stays for tens of thousands of years. In some models, this longest-lasting fraction is as large as 30%.