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
heat isn’t just heat, and greenhouse gasses care about what kind of light is holding that heat.
When the sun is blasting us with energy it comes in as more or less even distribution of electromagnetic waves, including visible light and ultra-violet light. Greenhouse gasses tend to be transparent to those higher frequencies of light and just pass it right trough uninterrupted.
However the earth is mostly radiating heat out via infrared light. Greenhouse gasses are *not* transparent to that, and will try to absorb that radiation. This causes the”bounceback”.
Essentially the gasses form a one-way mirror. It will let the high-energy light pass trough from the sun, but doesn’t allow the lower-energy infrared radiation to pass back out from the other side.
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