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Warming Vs Global Warming

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Climate Change vs. Global Warming The fact is that in the farthest reaches of the north and south, there is a nightmare becoming a reality that must be clearly understood. In order to understand this rising threat at hand, it is important to clarify the common terms of climate change and global warming that the crumbling of ice is most often referred to. Climate change is the overarching term that is used to encompass changes that are occurring to the planet such as global warming, sea level rise, glaciers dissolving, and ice sheets disappearances. While climate change refers a broad range of changes, these changes are mostly consequences that result from global warming. Global warming is the term within the climate change category that was first used by scientists to refer to the phenomenon of the constant warming of the planet as a result of excess amounts of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. More often than not, climate change and global warming are terms that can be used interchangeably but strictly speaking they do not mean the same thing.
Heat Transfer To understand global warming, one must first become aware of how the transfer of heat works on Earth, what is most commonly referred to as the “heat budget” [ ]. In order to maintain the steady average of 59 degrees Fahrenheit on this planet, the radiations coming in from the sun must be at the same level as radiations going out. From this heat exchange, radiations are then responsible for the cooling and heating of planet Earth. The role of the atmosphere is to
Figure 1: Natural Green House Effect reflect, absorb, and direct the incoming radiations from the sun’s rays through space. As depicted in Figure 1, the rays pass through the atmosphere, it is absorbed by greenhouse gas molecules into the Earth’s surface, then re-emitted in all directions. This is also known as the natural greenhouse effect. By maintaining this process, the Earth is able to provide enough warmth as well as sustain heat in the lower atmosphere, exactly like a blanket. Relating back to the topic at hand, seawater and ice on the planet are the ones most responsible for doing the this reflecting. The ocean water and polar ice help reflect the incoming

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