Overview of The Atmosphere

The Atmosphere

The atmosphere is a mixture of gases that surround the earth. It helps make life possible by providing us with air to breathe, shielding us from harmful ultraviolet( UV) radiation coming from the sun, trapping heat to warm the planet, preventing extreme temperature between day and night. Without the atmosphere, temperatures would be well below freezing everywhere on earth’s surface. Instead, the heat absorbed and trapped by our atmosphere keeps our planet’s average temperature at a balmy 15 °C (59°F) . Some of the atmosphere’s gases, like carbon dioxide, are particularly good at absorbing and trapping radiation. Changes in the amounts of these gases directly affect our climate.

Myths about the ATMOSPHERE

Myth #1: The climate has always changed. It's natural.

No scientist will disagree that the climate changes naturally. It always has and it always will. What makes the recent changes stand out is the unprecedented pace of change.

Because "the present anthropogenic (human-caused) carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years," as scientists concluded in a 2016 study in Nature Geoscience, the rate of temperature rise is 10 times faster than that of the last mass extinction about 56 million years ago.

Science has a firm handle on the various reasons why the climate changes naturally. Two examples are long-term fluctuations in sunlight due to changes in Earth's orbit, which modulate ice ages, and shorter-term release of sun-dimming ash from large volcanoes, like Mount Pinatubo, which cooled Earth's surface by 1 degree Fahrenheit in 2001.

None of these natural changes can explain the spike in heating since the 1800s. In contrast, physics calculates that most of the recent warming stems from heat-trapping greenhouse gases released by the burning of fossil fuels. According to climate scientist and data analyst Dr. Zeke Hausfather, "Our best estimate is that 100% of the warming the world has experienced is due to human activities. Natural factors — changes in solar output and volcanoes — would have led to slight cooling over the past 50 years."

Myth #2: It's cold out. What happened to global warming?

It should be obvious that Earth as a whole can warm up and at the same time certain parts of the Earth can feel cold. Yet cold weather is common cited as evidence against climate change — both sincerely and, by some, disingenuously. Famously, in 2015, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma held up a snowball on the Senate floor on a cold winter day to deny the existence of climate change.

At issue here is the difference between weather and climate. When scientists use the term global warming, or climate change, it refers to a broad temperature shift across the entire Earth's surface over the course of years and decades. The term weather, on the other hand, is the short-term, sometimes abrupt day-to-day variation in any given location. A good way to think about it is: Weather is your mood; Climate is your personality. Global warming does not prohibit cold, it just makes extreme cold less intense and less likely. Winter is still winter, it's just not as wintery overall.

References

* CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION(2021)  What is the atmosphere

https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/atmosphere/what-is-atmosphere

* Berardelli J(2020, February 27)  Myths about climate change. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-myths-what-science-really-says/