Kind: captions
Language: en
have you heard of the greenhouse effect
co2 is a greenhouse gas here's how it
works
the Sun sends a lot of energy towards
the earth the earth radiates energy back
out into space but some of that outgoing
radiation gets trapped warming our
planet one of the biggest factors in
determining how much energy gets trapped
is the concentration of greenhouse gases
like carbon dioxide in our atmosphere
the higher the levels of these energy
trapping molecules the warmer our planet
gets over the last 800,000 years the
concentration of co2 in the atmosphere
has cycled between 180 and 280 parts per
million but if we extend the co2 graph
forward to the present day you'll see an
extreme increase in the past couple
hundred years this is especially true
over the last 60 years since we've been
able to directly measure the carbon
dioxide in our atmosphere so not only is
co2 higher now than it has been during
the last million years they're rated
which is going up it's also much faster
than it has ever done in the past about
a hundred times faster than it ever has
during the last million years today
co2 levels are over 400 parts per
million the last time they were this
high was about 3 million years ago when
there was little ice in the Arctic in
the east coast of North America was
under water those changes can't happen
overnight but we're already starting to
see things shift if you warm things up
it takes a while for the pollen to move
northward to then grow plants if you
look at places in the tundra today we're
starting to see more shrubs and as the
shrubs grow the trees start to migrate
northward and it might take another
thousand years for the forests to come
back around like algae Vidkun the
orbital cycles triggered the planets
warming and cooling over the past
million years co2 amplifies that pattern
really helping to drive those glacial
interglacial cycles scientists are still
trying to figure out how the orbital
cycles and fluctuations in co2 are
really
but one thing is clear the amount of co2
in our atmosphere determines how much
ice is on our poles
you