Sentences with phrase «also absorb greenhouse gases»

Forests, lest we forget, aren't just essential homes to many species; they also absorb greenhouse gases.

Not exact matches

The Kyoto Protocol also allows a nation to emit more greenhouse gases if it increases the earth's capacity to absorb these gases.

Oceans are taking in about 90 percent of the excess heat created by human greenhouse gas emissions, but they're also absorbing some of the carbon dioxide (CO2) itself.

All the greenhouse gases absorb infrared, and they also release the infrared, so these act as blockades to the infrared, leaving the atmosphere and going off into space; and the Earth warms up to send off even more infrared from the surface in order to reach its state, sort of a steady state with regard to space.

Now scientists have new evidence indicating El Niño conditions might also add extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as well as lessen the ability of trees to absorb the greenhouse gas.

It's not totally about how much infrared from the surface that is blocked (currently about 90 % of surface emissions is absorbed by greenhouse gases), its also about the height within the atmosphere from which radiation escapes.

There are also concerns that oceans, which currently absorb more than 90 percent of the extra heat being trapped by human greenhouse gas emissions, could eventually release some of that back to the surface, speeding up the surface temperature rise.

«To mitigate climate change means to know well where the emissions of greenhouse gases come from and also how natural systems absorb some of them,» Van Ypersele said.

We also know that when heated, greenhouse gases become lighter and ascend into the atmosphere only to give absorbed heat away.

The dwindling forest cover becomes not only less efficient in absorbing and removing this «greenhouse gas,» but the fires also add new, huge volumes of it.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions.

The excess gases in the atmosphere are believed to enhance the greenhouse effect by not only preventing infrared light from escaping into space, but also by absorbing more outgoing energy, leading to warmer surface temperatures.

Both wetland drying and the increased frequency of warm dry summers and associated thunderstorms have led to more large fires in the last ten years than in any decade since record - keeping began in the 1940s.9 In Alaskan tundra, which was too cold and wet to support extensive fires for approximately the last 5,000 years, 105 a single large fire in 2007 released as much carbon to the atmosphere as had been absorbed by the entire circumpolar Arctic tundra during the previous quarter - century.106 Even if climate warming were curtailed by reducing heat - trapping gas (also known as greenhouse gas) emissions (as in the B1 scenario), the annual area burned in Alaska is projected to double by mid-century and to triple by the end of the century, 107 thus fostering increased emissions of heat - trapping gases, higher temperatures, and increased fires.

The burning of tropical forests not only ends their ability to absorb carbon, it also produces an immediate flow of carbon back to the atmosphere, making it one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

The atmosphere absorbs thermal radiation because of the trace greenhouse gases, and also emits thermal radiation, in all directions.

The rate at which the ocean is absorbing greenhouse - gas - induced warming is also now known to be fairly modest.