• Question: how does global warming work

    Asked by jd to Claire, Liad, Ruth, Ryan, Mako on 13 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Ryan Cheale

      Ryan Cheale answered on 13 Jun 2015:

      Global warming works by the green house effect.

      So first imagine a green house and how it keeps heat in for certain plants etc

      but on earth we don’t have a huge sphere of glass doing that! But what happens is CO (carbon monoxide) and other gases (Methane etc) sit in our atmospheres and as photons come in from the sun and bounce off of the earth some are stopped by these green house gases and reflected back in! So like a green house the heat is kept in rather than dissipated.

      Too an extent we want this or the earth would be cold and baron. But it’s a delicate system and too much causes the earth to heat up which can have some poor effects!

    • Photo: Ruth Elderfield

      Ruth Elderfield answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Global warming works by energy from sun entering they Earth, but some of it being blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere (the gases surrounding the Earth) so the heat energy is unable to leave. Recently we have added extra gases (greenhouse gases) so that more of the energy is blocked from leaving the Earth and it is getting hotter at a faster rate.

Comments