What is Global Warming?

Question

Why is it happening? Answer Separately.
How can it be controlled? Answer Separately.

Answer 1

WHAT IS GLOBAL WARMING?

Global warming is a long term trend during which the average temperatures across the planet increase. The earth goes through natural warming and cooling cycles and has done since it was created a little over 4.5 billion years ago, these natural cycles are Natural Global Warming.

In the last 200 years temperatures have been rising much faster than can be attributed to natural events and the view is that this unprecedented rise is caused by human activities, something called Anthropogenic Global Warming. Often when people refer to global warming it's actually anthropogenic global warming that they mean; to avoid confusion it's important to distinguish between the two.


WHY IS IT HAPPENING?

Our atmosphere acts like a blanket trapping heat and keeping Earth at a habitable temperature, it’s this retaining of heat that is referred to as the Greenhouse Effect. The greenhouse effect is caused by greenhouse gases that trap heat from the sun, the more greenhouse gases there are the more heat is retained.

Water vapour (H20) is the most prevalent greenhouse gas and occurs naturally. Some greenhouse gases are both natural and manmade including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (NO) and tetraflouromethane (CF4). There are several synthetic gases consisting of carbon and halogens, many of the manmade greenhouse gases are also responsible for ozone depletion.

As with temperature, there is a natural cycle in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Ice core samples extending back some 650,000 years show the minimum amount of atmospheric CO2 to have been around 190 parts per million by volume (ppmv) and the maximum about 300 ppmv. The worry is that the current levels of CO2 are considerably higher at around 385 ppmv .


HOW CAN IT BE CONTROLLED?

Controlling the climate requires the use of techniques called Geoengineering. There are several schemes that have been suggested to engineer our climate. I won't go into details here (let me know if you want details) other than to say that they concentrate primarily on a) removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and b) reduction in solar radiation (sunlight) reaching us from the sun.

A brief summary of some geoengineering schemes - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/6298507.stm

We can reduce the effects of global warming, somewhat different to controlling it, here are some ways to reduce the effects http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/combat.html

Answer 2

Global warming is the increase in global climate due to the concentration of Carbon dioxide in the atmoshprere ... when the suns rays hit earth, they bounce back off but if there is too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the path of the light, the light is once again reflected towards the planet. This means that as more and more carbon dioxide is released, more and more light/heat energy is being reflected back at the Earth ...

The real fear with global warming is that it will change the climates across the world, causing an unbalanced equilibrium throughout the world. This unbalance could lead to hotter weather as a whole with changed weather and wind paterns and increased numbers of tropical storms and hurricanes. In other words, the weather would be warmer and nastier. This could cause many species who cannot adapt to the environment to die out, thereofre damaging the ecosystem.

However, it could, in another way, cause another ice age. For example, partly due to global warming, Great Britain will be surrounded by ice probably within the next 100 years.




It can be controlled but only by reducing the amount of Carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. This would slow down the warming but to stop the warming, mankind would have to produce so little extra carbon dioxide (other than threw breathing) that trees would be able to recycle it. Another solution would be to cover as much land area on earth with woodland/plantlife

hope it helps

Answer 3

Global Warming is a steady rise in climatic temperatures. Global Warming; however, is not new, it has happened many times before. Global Warming is a natural cycle of the earth. We really can't put a complete stop to Global Warming but we can slow it down.

Answer 4

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation.

The climate system varies through natural, internal processes and in response to variations in external forcing factors including solar activity, volcanic emissions, variations in the earth's orbit (orbital forcing) and greenhouse gases. The detailed causes of the recent warming remain an active field of research, but the scientific consensus [10] identifies increased levels of greenhouse gases due to human activity as the main influence. This attribution is clearest for the most recent 50 years, for which the most detailed data are available. Contrasting with the scientific consensus, other hypotheses have been proposed to explain most of the observed increase in global temperatures. One such hypothesis is that the warming is caused by natural fluctuations in the climate or that warming is mainly a result of variations in solar radiation.

Answer 5

Global Warming is happening because of a sharp rise of global temperatures due to we humans damaging the environment.

This can be solved by, well, probably reusing plastic bags, consuming less electricity.

Answer 6

Global Warming is our main global issues in our environment. It is the gradual increase of temperature.
It is cause mainly by human activities (us), the contributors. One example are the products of technology such as sprays and refrigerator.

It can be controlled by carbon sequestration. It is a useful way to sequester CARBON DIOXIDE, a compound that is useful to plants but deadly in our environment. To lessen carbon dioxide in our surroundings, trees is the best answer. Can beautify and bring cheerfulness to our Mother Earth.

Answer 7

Global warming...cause increase in temperature...and start to have disaters like flooding...Therefore ice melting at the north and soulth pole.Sea level rises and asia countries are facing flooding problems...Weather gets extreme hot then before.

Use less electricity...use less plastice bags..use less papers..print both sides of papers.Get a LCD tv as it uses only 1/3 of electricity.Use less air-con...

Answer 8

1 Most it in our mind we got ac in our car ac in the store and our home
2 What happen is . When come out the store the black top is hot anything black get hotter an you come out store got ac at about 70 and the heat coming off the black top make you think it getting hotter. back years ago it was hot as a kid i kick dust up 2 in deep it hot in house and out side.
3 Don't use hot water in the washer and take short shower and turn out the light better go bed when it dark go store once a week cut back gone ball games walk a lot or ride a bike