Question: How does carbon affect the atmosphere

Anna Scaife answered on 13 Nov 2014:

Hey Tiernan – the surface of the Earth is a pretty warm place, but the planet regulates its temperature by radiating away excess heat. If you have lots of carbon in the atmosphere then that carbon absorbs the heat and re-emits it. The problem is that it doesn’t re-emit it all out into space, some of it gets re-emitted back towards the Earth so the Earth warms up again. A little bit of carbon in the atmosphere isn’t a problem but the more you have, the more difficult it is for the Earth to regulate its temperature and things heat up too much. That’s why we call it the “Greenhouse Effect” because it can get pretty uncomfortably hot in a greenhouse…