Greenhouse Effect

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What is the Greenhouse Effect?

The greenhouse effect is a process that occurs when gases in Earth’s atmosphere traps the Sun’s heat reflected from earth.

Greenhouse

Let us try understanding this effect better.

A few gases let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the glass walls of a greenhouse. These gases that are responsible for trapping heat are called greenhouse gases. Examples of the same are carbon dioxide, water vapour, nitrous oxide, methane.

In the atmosphere, greenhouse gas molecules trap some of the heat, and the rest escapes into space. Without this process, life would not have been possible on the earth as it keeps the earth warm. But now the same life-saving process is proving to be life-threatening. Because the concentration of greenhouse gases is increasing due to increased air pollution and also due to the extensive cutting of trees. Hence more heat is getting trapped in the atmosphere.

As a result, the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere is gradually increasing. This is called global warming. Global warming is the major reason for the erratic rainfalls, hotter summers, floods, glacier melting and many more.

How can we prevent rising levels of greenhouse gases?

• We can switch to using environment-friendly fuels to run our vehicles, that is we can switch over to compressed natural gas rather than use petrol and diesel for the
• At an individual level, we could plant trees and use fossil fuels
• We can reduce the burning of waste and instead bury it to provide us with

Summary