Global Warming: Difference Between Climate And Volcanoes

Perhaps the most vital thing to address is the difference between climate and weather, because so many people don 't know the difference. Weather is what happens on a short time scale--from day to day, while climate is more long term, and is the long term trend over hundreds to thousands of years. We are releasing tons of gases and dust particles into the earth 's atmosphere every day, and so the salient question becomes: What type of effect do these gases have on our atmosphere? Most climate scientists would agree that the earth 's climate is influenced by many different factors, but the most fundamental concept in climate science is that the incoming solar energy is balanced by the outgoing long-wave energy. Disrupting this balance in …show more content…
Aerosols, which are basically tiny dust particles that actually reflect sunlight, meaning they deter the incoming energy that reaches the surface from the sun, this means that they can have a global cooling effect. Volcanoes are a natural mechanism through which aerosols are put into the atmosphere. One example of an aerosol, particularly a volcanic aerosol is sulfate (SO4). Volcanoes release sulfate when they erupt and create a global cooling effect, this cooling effect is particularly effective when the sulfate reaches the stratosphere which is about 10 km up. The mount Pinatubo eruption of 1991 had a global cooling effect, this effect was noted by a drop in the rate of warming that was going on in the early 90s as a result of global warming from CO2 emissions. Although volcanoes are a natural mechanism by which aerosols enter the atmosphere, anthropogenic aerosol release is also a possibility. Whenever you kick dust up into the air, you are putting aerosols into the atmosphere, the only difference between a volcano and anthropogenic dust is that the latter doesn 't usually reach the stratosphere, so it stay down closer to the surface, giving it a lower residence …show more content…
Of course, scientifically this is absurd--only a basic understanding of scientific processes is required to understand that pollutants we put into the atmosphere have an effect the environment. We must convince, and educate the general product about the externalities of polluting our planet. Once the general public has the basic knowledge to understand this concept, we will begin to see change--a shift from coal and fossil fuels to renewable energies such as solar and wind. As we mentioned earlier, these pollutants, particularly CO2 have a long residence time, meaning that even if we stop polluting the atmosphere all together, right now, which is wildly unrealistic, we would still have to worry about all the CO2 that 's already there! In conclusion, the gasses and pollutants put into out atmosphere effect it ways you might not think is possible, so each person 's carbon footprint matters and has an effect on the future climate of our