So what I’m reading is that these gas absorb the light from the sun and keeps it trapped on the earth.
What I don’t get is how is it letting the light and heat in from the sun in, but not the light and heat reflected from the Earth out? If it’s a barrier, shouldn’t it block both ways? If it’s not a barrier, how is it trapping the heat?
In: 950
Basically, Regular sunlight/energy is going from Space to Earth, where it’s reflected, then back to Space.
What happens with greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxides, etc, is the bigger molecules interact with the sun’s energy and slow down the transfer back into space.
The longer the energy spends in the atmosphere the more the atmosphere heats up. If the concentration of greenhouse gases get high enough it basically traps the energy indefinitely.
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