By Tina Casey •
October 8, 2009
A desert is the perfect place to find water — if you have the right equipment, that is. Scientists and engineers from NASA’s Langley Research Center have set up camp in the “driest place in the world,” the Chilean desert of Atacama, to deploy an instrument called the Far-Infrared Spectroscopy of the Troposphere (FIRST). One of only four instruments of its kind in the world, FIRST measures the effect of high altitude water vapor on the Earth’s atmosphere.
FIRST could help researchers more effectively predict changes in the Earth’s climate, since it measures a band of radiation linked to the absorption of water vapor through the greenhouse effect. This radiation activity is a significant climate factor that may account for half of the Earth’s natural cooling mechanism. However, while other major factors have been studied from satellites, the technology has not been developed to do so with water vapor. The FIRST equipment may well live up to its name and deliver our first precisely measurable insights into the effect of water vapor on our climate.
With Congress deep in debate over legislation aimed at the prevention of global warming, and skeptics ramping up their rhetoric, it seemed like a good time to take a step back to some basics — more accurate information is critical here. Step one in figuring in out how we can help in the battle against climate change involves answering questions like “What are the major causes of global warming?”
What causes global warming?
Scientists have understood the greenhouse effect since the early 19th century; the
first paper on the topic was published in 1896. Essentially, certain gases trap energy from the sun: according to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, greenhouse gases “act as a partial blanket for the longwave radiation coming from the surface. This blanketing is known as the natural greenhouse effect.”
What are greenhouse gases?
Several compounds contribute to the greenhouse effect, including
By Brian Liloia •
April 18, 2009
To understand how humans cause global warming, it is important that you are aware of the link between your daily activities and the greenhouse effect. Furthermore, once you understand this, it is easy to see that you have the power to help stop global warming from getting worse.
The primary way humans cause global warming is by burning fossil fuels. This increases the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, which leads to an increase in the Greenhouse Effect.
This month, as the results of data analyses come in, climate scientists are getting a more detailed, far clearer picture of the ‘State of the Poles’ and the effects of warming and climate change in these most extreme regions of our planet. Although this project is actually the culmination of two years work (encompassing 160 separate studies and costing 1.2 billion dollars) it has been officially deemed the ‘International Polar Year’ (IPY).
One of the most important findings of this project is a confirmation of what many climate scientists have suspected for a couple of years now–that the impact of climate change on our environment is happening at a much faster rate than previous computer models predicted. This is true even for the four major reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the last of which was released in 2007).
By Dawn Killough •
January 30, 2009
A report issued on Monday, January 26, 2009, says that most of the damage we have done to the environment is irreversible. What does this mean to the green movement?
