Читать книгу Weather For Dummies - John D. Cox - Страница 70

Like water vapor, the gas carbon dioxide has powerful greenhouse effects, trapping outgoing heat radiation, a process that is natural and beneficial — up to a point.

Carbon dioxide is constantly recycled through biological process of animals and plants. It is absorbed from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, the process by which plants take sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide and make food to grow on. In the bargain, the plants give off oxygen.

Carbon dioxide is supplied to the atmosphere through such things as the decay of plant and animal material and such human activities as timber harvesting and the emission of exhausts in the burning of fossil fuels, such as gasoline and other oil products and coal.

This gas has no direct effect on daily weather, and most of it gets washed out by rain or snow. But like all greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide has an effect on climate, weather’s long-term patterns. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been steadily on the rise for more than a century. (Chapter 14 describes how increased concentrations of CO₂ have led to some pretty alarming worries about global warming.)