What Is The Natural Greenhouse Effect? | Environmental Chemistry | Chemistry | FuseSchool

Learn the basics about the natural greenhouse effect.

The atmosphere helps to keep our planet warm by making it harder for the energy we get from the sun to escape back to the universe. Our atmosphere is held to the earth by the force of gravity.

Visible light gets straight through our transparent atmosphere and is partly absorbed by the earth which gets hot. Hot things radiate infra red rays. Although visible light got through the atmosphere, the infra red radiation coming from the earth finds it more difficult to get through. So the atmosphere acts a bit like glass letting visible light through to warm the earth but some of the heat (or infra-red) radiation now given off gets absorbed by certain gases in the atmosphere, called greenhouse gases.

In this way the earth is kept warm and we say there is a natural greenhouse effect. The two natural gases that absorb infra-red are water vapour and carbon dioxide. Clouds, made of water droplets, insulate night skies in the winter, but without the clouds the heat gets away and frost forms.

Before the world became industrialised by burning fossil fuels such as coal oil and natural gas, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was about 0.028% tiny compared with O=O at 21% and NN at 78%, but enough to keep us warm. Without this natural blanket of insulating gas the earth would be too cold to support life as we know it.

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This video is part of 'Chemistry for All' - a Chemistry Education project by our Charity Fuse Foundation - the organisation behind FuseSchool. These videos can be used in a flipped classroom model or as a revision aid. Find our other Chemistry videos here:

[fionagill]

Who else here has to watch this for school

[bobtheuberfish]

That beautiful music is called "Secret Conversations" and it is by Jeick Walker

[jackogcafc]

Homework done in 20 minutes! Brilliant video

[An_anshika]

Sadly I couldn't afford the book for environmental science and other subjects for exam thanku so so much for this video and I thought to help you somehow I think I could do the translation of video if you give permission so that other children who can't understand english might get help from me 🙂🙏🙏🙏

[spikedesignworks]

Beautiful graphics to accompany excellent information. Nice work!

[idakoric]

Who gives clear, simple, scientifically accurate information a thumbs down?

[lynxy]

Is that wallace from wallace and gromit?

[abhijaysingh]

video would be aight if it didn't sound like winston churchill came back from the dead

[joelgrayson]

2:39 Isn't the heat from convection greater than from infrared here?

[chris-jwyv]

2:38 90% of people would try to do it.

[bronze_cookie]

Who got this linked for your chemistry homework in quarantine?

[shayaandanish]

What, the matter in earth doesn't add or reduce unless comets or other things from space enter.

[wrath]

What do mean when you say CO2 absorbs infra red energy? Does it just get hotter and hotter or does it simply distribute the now kinetic energy to the molecules around it?
Are you saying that less energy leaves the Earth than it receives from the Sun to make it warmer? How is equilibrium restored? If the Earth is now warmer, would it not radiate more energy than before, cooling itself, so ultimately reach the original equilibrium temperature due to the energy from the Sun. I cannot see how the Earth can be in equilibrium withe Sun at two different temperatures. Clearly greenhouse gases cannot make the Earth in total warmer. Are you arguing that the temperature at the surface gets warmer and the higher parts of the atmosphere get colder to compensate? Can you define where the average temperature of the Earth will be. Gravity determines the way temperature changes as you approach the surface. What will the surface temperature be due to the gravity effect alone if the average temperature of the molecules in the atmosphere is at -18C that the Sun provides sufficient energy to raise them on average? Are you saying the average temperature is at the surface?

[mackenziegodfrey]

What software did you use to make the animations?

[mikem]

that guy sounds a bit like michael caine lmao

[evansweerawardene]

Brilliant effort however it is much better if presented in a litle bit more detail

[davidlloyd]

Temperature increases before CO2 increases.

[terencerucker]

Good video but kind of slow and, well, sleep-inducing.

[TheJdollar]

I really wish these videos were longer instead of looking at multiple videos

[maxkelly]

anybody else think he sounds like the guy from the I.T. croud (: