greenhouse warming?? Can you define it?

Question

I need help. I do not understand, and yes this is in my homework but i've looked in a cuople dictinaries and could not find it.

Answer 1

Meaning the Greenhouse Effect? (The phenomenon whereby the earth's atmosphere traps solar radiation, caused by the presence in the atmosphere of gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane that allow incoming sunlight to pass through but absorb heat radiated back from the earth's surface.)

Answer 2

Okay. You've crossed two terms here. You either mean Greenhouse Effect, or global warming. They are the same thing, but you worded it wrong.

It is basically, all of the bad gases that the world population is emitting is becoming trapped in the atmosphere, therefore warming the Earth. It's sort of like when you have a hot plate of food and you cover it with a towel to trap in the heat. Except, for the Earth, this is bad. It causes the polar ice caps (north and south poles) to begin melting, which pushes cold waters toward the equator. This changes weather patterns, causes more hurricanes (when the cold water mixes with the warm), and puts the Earth through extreme temperature changes.

Answer 3

The greenhouse effect, first discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824, and first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896, is the process in which the absorption of infrared radiation by an atmosphere warms a planet. Without these greenhouse gases, the Earths surface would be up to 30 °C cooler. The name comes from an incorrect analogy with the way in which greenhouses are heated by the sun in order to facilitate plant growth. In addition to the Earth, Mars, Venus and other celestial bodies with atmospheres (such as Titan) have greenhouse effects.

In common parlance, the term greenhouse effect may be used to refer either to the natural greenhouse effect, due to naturally occuring greenhouse gases, or to the enhanced (anthropogenic) greenhouse effect, which results from gases emitted as a result of human activities (see also global warming, scientific opinion on climate change and attribution of recent climate change).