Shouldn’t greenhouse gasses also make the atmosphere reflect the heat before it enters the atmosphere?

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My very limited understanding of the subject is that the heat from the sun goes through the atomosphere and then it just kinda bounces between the atomosphere and the earth. Increased greenhouse gasses lead to increased “bounceback”. But shouldn’t increased greenhouse gasses also reduce the heat that enters the system in the first place?

Apologies for any confusion caused by being on mobile and not speaking English as a native language.

In: Biology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png)

This is the sun spectrum, meaning what are the different wavelenght the Sun emit. You can also see how much the atmosphere absorb or reflect back to space. The Sun mostly emit in visible light, but you can see the different gases absorb and reflect specific wavelenght.

You can see that CO2 absorb and reflect basically nothing, because the incoming light have very little photon at the specific wavlenght that interact with CO2.

There is phenomenon called thermal radiation. ALL matter emit radiation at a specific wavelenght depending on their temperature. If you look at your oven heating element it’s glowing reddish, a fire glow yellow/orange at the center where it’s hotter, then go to reddish on the outside where it’s colder, and most matter around us is cold enough to emit radiation in infrared. As most of the incoming heat is in visible light, but most of the heat the earth send back to space is in infrared, which CO2 will in part absorb and reflect.

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