EVSC 1450 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Greenhouse Gas, Carbon Cycle, Water Vapor

• School: University of Virginia
• Department: Environmental Sciences
• Course: EVSC 1450
• Professor: Lawrence Deborah

Document Summary

Solar constant (how strong is the sun?) Add a second layer to the atmosphere. This is representative of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. When you put water in, it alters the other elements a little bit. Also, water is a greenhouse gas -- skeptics mentions this all the time. Background, not changing, not likely to be responsible for change. Melting + irrigation = more water cycling through atmosphere. Indirectly human-induced changes, through a feedback from warming. But water is not the greenhouse gas (ghg) we are all concerned about. 99. 5% of the dry atmosphere is not ghg. How important can the remaining 0. 05% be? . Greenhouse gas abundance: most important (0. 05% of your life. Greenhouse gas abundance: non co2 parts of the 0. 05% Methane is 20x as potent as co2 (holds heat 20x as well) O3 -- 10 ppm (ozone) -- in stratosphere it"s 1000 pm and protects us from uv. Down here, like a poison, bad for us.