The following Saturday morning, a few inches of snow was on the ground. My roommates and I got up early that morning, partly because we were freezing, and just stared out the window, said Jayme Golembeski, a senior finance major. Golembeski, like many students, dismissed the temperature changes on Colorado's unpredictable weather. They believe increasingly high temperatures may be due, at least in part, to global warming. The sun sends short-wave radiation through the Earth's atmosphere.
Some radiation is absorbed and some is bounced back in the form of long-wave radiation.
This energy provides the heat necessary to sustain life on earth. Greenhouse gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, naturally exist in the earth s atmosphere. Disagreement arises over whether human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, has intensified the process and caused the earth s temperatures to rise. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states the last few decades have been much warmer than any time in the last 1000 years. Records date back to 1880.