negative feedback, definition of

Greenhouse gases are those gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb and emit radiation at specific wavelengths within the spectrum of thermal infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface, the atmosphere itself, and by clouds. This property causes the greenhouse effect.

Greenhouse gases are essential to maintaining the current temperature of the Earth; without them the planet would be uninhabitable.

Wikipedia Entry

• Demystifying feedback.
  Guest post by Nick Stokes, People outside climate science seem drawn to feedback analogies for climate behaviour. Climate scientists sometimes make use of them too, although they are not part of GCMs. But it gets tangled. In fact, all that the feedback...
• Another negative climate feedback: more CO2 = more plants = more aerosols = cooling
  Recall a couple of days ago that I posted on the aerosols released by trees: Those dirty trees: why hasn’t the EPA called for trees to be regulated? Now, from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis  comes a cause-effect … Continue...
• Dronning Maud Meets the Little Ice Age
  Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach I have to learn to keep my blood pressure down … this new paper, “Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks“, hereinafter M2012, has me shaking...
• New peer reviewed paper: clouds have large negative cooling effect on Earth’s radiation budget
  Oh dear, now we have three peer reviewed papers (Lindzen and Choi, Spencer and Braswell, and now Richard P. Allan) based on observations that show a net negative feedback for clouds, and a strong one at that. What will Trenberth … Continue reading...
• New peer reviewed paper: clouds have large negative-feedback cooling effect on Earth’s radiation budget
  Oh dear, now we have three peer reviewed papers (Lindzen and Choi, Spencer and Braswell, and now Richard P. Allan) based on observations that show a net negative feedback for clouds, and a strong one at that. What will Trenberth … Continue reading...

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