Climate change encompasses sustained shifts in Earth’s atmospheric and environmental conditions. Articles address greenhouse gases, warming, feedbacks, measured trends, attribution, regional effects, and projections developed from observations and scientific models.
Nitrous oxide occupies only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, but each release carries consequences for more than a century. The colorless gas, N2O, absorbs outgoing infrared radiation and survives long enough to become thoroughly mixed around the planet. When it eventually reaches the...
Methane remains in the atmosphere for only about a decade on average, yet it exerts unusually strong warming while it is there. Its four-hydrogen, one-carbon structure absorbs infrared radiation in portions of the spectrum where additional absorption has a pronounced climatic effect. Methane also...
The Keeling Curve turns the atmosphere into a line that can be read across generations. It records the concentration of carbon dioxide above Mauna Loa, Hawaii, beginning in 1958. The graph rises from about 315 parts per million in its earliest measurements to monthly values above 430 parts per...