How Global Warming Could Cause an Ice Age

Running head：HOW GLOBAL WARMING COULD CAUSE AN ICE AGE

How Global Warming Could Cause an Ice Age

Or：What scientific knowledge do we learn from the movie, “The Day After Tomorrow”？

Wang Yao-Wei （Daniel）

ESL 306

Kelly Cathcart

March 10, 2006

What is global warming? This is a very popular issue all over the world. In order to learn more about global warming, we should go through what makes the earth warm and how warming affects the earth. The first thing we need to be familiar with is the greenhouse effect. It plays an important part in controlling the earth temperature. Thus, we need to know how the greenhouse effect is to know how it could affect the earth.

Global warming and greenhouse effect：

The greenhouse effects is caused when surface and atmosphere absorb the sun’s short-wave radiation then release it as long-wave radiation to the atmosphere and the surface. That means the greenhouse effect gases are in the air and they affect the radiation. Because of the greenhouse effect gases, the atmosphere absorbs the infrared radiation and reflects them to the surface. So at the surface, the surface absorbs the infrared radiation and emits it back to the atmosphere. According to this kind of process, the amount of the radiation that the atmosphere absorbs is more than it releases. Hence, the earth becomes warmer. We could be experiencing this “greenhouse effect.”

The percentage of greenhouse effect gases only totals 1%. They include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), water (H2O) and ozone (O3). Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere by using the fossil fuels, this kind of greenhouse effect gas enters into the atmosphere in a big number. And carbon dioxide will absorb the radiation reflected from the surface.

Next we will talk about the two most important issues that are occurred by the greenhouse effect. The first one is the changing of the climate. Global...