World's largest switchboard for climate monitoring
26 February 2002
http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/ESA8SOVTYWC_index_0.html
ESA Info 3-2002. Europe's showpiece in climate monitoring is called Envisat.
Fully equipped, the
largest, most complex and most powerful Earth observation satellite of the
European Space Agency
(ESA) is 25 metres high, ten metres wide and weighs over eight tons. It is
scheduled for launch in
the night of 28 February/1st March on an Ariane 5 launcher.
Europe's flying behemoth is on the trail of climate change. It will deliver
data about global
warming, ozone depletion and climate change for at least five years. The
information is absolutely
necessary and long overdue as the basis for political decisions about climate
change.
>snip>
The greenhouse effect
Without the natural greenhouse effect it is certain that we would all be
lost. The global average
temperature would drop precipitously 33 degrees from its current 15¡ to -18¡C.
The Earth would
congeal into an ice planet where life would cease to exist. Without the
greenhouse effect life on
our planet would not be possible at all. The principle is simple: trace gases
of the Earth's
envelope of air act like the pane of glass in a greenhouse. They let through
the energy of visible
sunlight but hold back the emission of the thermal radiation. As a consequence
the air is heated and
the temperature rises in the atmosphere. Water vapour alone accounts for a rise
of 20.6¼C. Carbon
dioxide accounts for 7.2¼C and the rest is taken up by atmospheric trace gases
like ozone (2.4¼C),
nitrogen dioxide (1.4¼C) and methane (0.8¼C).
>snip>
[Keep in mind that CO2 is only 0.0035 per cent of the Earths atmosphere.
78 per cent is Nitrogen and 21 per cent is Oxygen.]
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