Global Warming: Climate Change and Its Impact

Climate change is easily identifiable with the erratic climate and weather patterns being experienced around the globe. It can be attributed to several factors that include the increase in temperature due to the trapped heat from the sun, called the greenhouse effect (More on, n.d. ) (see Figure 1). The trapped heat kept which is unable to escape into space kept the earth’ s temperature moderate to sustain life. But in the current trend, man is adding more gases into the atmosphere that amplify the temperature level (More on, n.d. ). Gases released into the atmosphere that trap heat from various sources are referred to as greenhouse gases or GHG (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2011).

Carbon dioxide is a GHG that results from natural organism processes and human activities (US EPA, 2011). Fluorinated gases are mainly caused by activities of man (US EPA, 2011). The primary GHGs are the carbon dioxide (from fossil fuel burning, solid waste and wood products, chemical reaction), methane (from production and transport of natural gas, oil and coal), nitrous oxide (from industrial and agricultural activities, fossil fuel combustion, solid waste), fluorinated gases (such as hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, from industrial production and activities) (US EPA, 2011), and tropospheric ozone (Joint science academies, n.d. ) (from interaction of ultraviolet light with hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides from cars, fossil fuel power plants, gasoline vapors, etc. ) (Tropospheric ozone, n.d. ).

Fluorinated gases, although emitted in low quantities, are highly dangerous and considered as High Global Warming Potential gases or High GWP gases (US EPA, 2011). The troposphere, shown in Figure 2) is located from 0 to 7 miles from the surface of the earth (Tropospheric ozone, n.d. ).

Tropospheric ozone damages living tissues and breaks down some materials (Tropospheric ozone, n.d. ).