2010/01/27 by T. Sloan, Sloan, T., A. W. Wolfendale +1
Energy · Environmental Science · #Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Global Energy and Sustainability Research #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph) #Science and Climate Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1001.4988
openalex publication_date 2010/01/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
One of the big problems of the age concerns 'Global Warming', and whether it is 'man-made' or 'natural'. Most climatologists believe that it is very likely to be the former but some scientists (mostly non-climatologists) subscribe to the latter. Unsurprisingly, the population at large is often confused and and is not convinced either way. Here we try to explain the principles of man-made global warming in a simple way. Our purpose is to try to understand the story which the climatologists are telling us through their rather complicated general circulation models. Although the effects in detail are best left to the climatologists' models, we show that for the Globe as a whole the effects of man-made global warming can be demonstrated in a simple way. The simple model of only the direct heating from the absorption of infrared radiation, illustrates the main principles of the science involved. The predicted temperature increase due to the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last century describes reasonably well at least most of the observed temperature increase.