Friday, May 11, 2007

Global Climate Change-- Yichen

This is the picture of overview about the global climte change.
Firstly, the earth obtains energy from the sun in the form of shortwave solar radiation. About 30% of this energy is reflected back into space. The rest pass through the atmosphere as light energy and is absorbed by the earth’s surface. Then this incoming light energy is absorbed by the earth’s surface. When the earth warms, it emits its own energy, in the form of longwave infrared radiation, or simply called heat energy. And some of this heat energy is reflected back towards the earth by greenhouse gases.

Due to the globalization, the use of vehicles and airlines to transport people increases, which will emitted a lot of greenhouse gases. It enhances greenhouse effect due to these increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Hence more of the outgoing infrared radiation is trapped in the atmosphere. This upsets the natural balance in energy transfers and causes the Earth’s average temperature to rise. And some areas experience cooling as extreme weather patterns cause higher amounts of precipitation.

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