Greenhouse Gasses Question

[Knowledge_Seeker]

Do the greenhouse gasses add to our atmosphere? I mean does it like make the atmosphere thicker? Or in instances swallow up parts of it, or enlarge it? Ex. makes the startosphere larger....

[Ken G]

Greenhouse gases are such a trace component of the atmosphere that it is probably not very useful to imagine them as making the atmosphere thicker. The key is that most of the atmosphere is highly transparent, but Greenhouse gases, even though they are trace components, are pretty good at blocking the direct escape of cooling infrared radiation, while not interfering with the incident warming visible light. In short, their importance is not their number, but their interactions with light.

[Wolverine]

Moved from Q&A to General Science.

[Taks]

In short, their importance is not their number, but their interactions with light.not to be confused with just visible light, or even just light in general... i.e. UV, infrared and other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum including particles are impacted by GHGs as well. reflectivity and absorptivity vary across the spectrum rather wildly.

taks

[Knowledge_Seeker]

but does it add to the atmosphere? because i was watching armagedon and was wondering if a very thick atmosphere would have some or any effect to its temperature, course, or weight.

[Taks]

they do indeed add to the thickness of the atmosphere. however, currently the largest (er, in terms of ppm) GHG is CO2, which sits at a lowly ~350 ppm. in other words, about 0.035% (strictly by particle count) of the atmosphere is CO2. even if we doubled that number, it would have little noticeable impact on the density of the atmosphere.

taks

[Knowledge_Seeker]

okay, that clears it up