carbon dioxide greenhouse gas experiment

The Greenhouse Effect Experiment

When it comes to our environment, it is so important that our children learn about the effects of climate change. One way we can start to educate them on environmental sciences is through a simple science experiment that creates the Greenhouse Effect in a jar. This activity is fantastic as a homeschool experiment, science fair project , classroom demonstration, and most importantly, as part of Earth Day lessons.

Climate Change Science Experiment

What you will discover in this article!

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In recent years the climate crisis has become one of the most important challenges facing Earth and all of Earth’s inhabitants. Understanding how the greenhouse effect works is a fundamental lesson we need to be teaching all of our students. Throughout their lifetime they are going to witness massive environmental changes. Many of which, we have already seen in our lives. I can only imagine what is to come, and I know it weighs heavily on my tweens and teens. But through education and changing our practices and lifestyles, there are things we can all do to make a difference and protect our planet.

Let’s start with this science experiment that demonstrates the greenhouse effect.

Greenhouse Gas Science Experiment Video Tutorial

Check out our video of this climate change experiment exploring greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect. If you can’t see the video, it is likely blocked by an adblocker. You can also view it on the STEAM Powered Family YouTube Channel .

What is the Greenhouse Effect?

First off, we need to explain the term: Greenhouse Effect . A greenhouse is a building with glass for the walls and roof. That glass structure traps heat inside, making it a great place to grow plants where it stays all warm and cozy, even after the sun goes down or it is cooler outside.

Instead of glass, our planet is surrounded by an atmosphere made up of gases. Like a great big puffy coat of gas wrapped around the entire planet. The atmosphere traps the sun’s heat on the Earth’s surface making our planet perfect for living organisms.

The balance of those gases is delicate, and due to a number of different factors, in particular the burning of fossil fuels, that balance is being disrupted and it is affecting the quality of that protective layer around our Earth.

One of the most important greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide. When we drive our cars and burn fossil fuels like gas and oil, we are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This in turn causes more heat to be trapped on the Earth, leading to an increase in the average temperatures. This affects all living organisms, including humans.

The Greenhouse Effect Science Experiment

Now we know about the greenhouse effect, let’s do some science! For this experiment we are going to use our much beloved and simple, baking soda and vinegar chemical reaction .

5 Large Jars – Using all 5 jars provides an opportunity to apply scientific theory and the scientific method . Vinegar – White, standard vinegar is best. Baking Soda – Also known as sodium bicarbonate or bicarb. Don’t use Baking Powder! It is a completely different chemical formula. You can learn more here about the differences between baking soda and baking powder . Measuring cups and spoons – Important for accuracy during testing. Plastic Wrap – Also known as clingfilm. It must be clear and able to seal tightly without tearing. I know we don’t want to use plastic, but in this case it is what we need for this science experiment. You can try it with other materials, but we struggled to get the desired results. You can always save the plastic and reuse it! Elastic bands – Large enough to fit over the mouth of the jar to secure the plastic wrap. Heat Source – You can use a sunny window sill if you live somewhere with lots of hot direct sunlight, or use a heat lamp, space heater, or in our case we used a heat vent/radiator. It just needs to provide lots of heat evenly between the jars. Thermometer – We have a non-contact infrared thermometer that worked perfectly. The kids LOVE using this type of thermometer in their science experiments but you can also use standard thermometers . If you use standard thermometers you will need one for each jar and a small knife or sharp scissors. Masking Tape and Sharpie – For labeling the jars

Prepare the Jars

Start by labeling the jars. You will want:

• Air (control)
• Vinegar (control)
• Baking Soda (control)

The fifth jar does not need to be labeled, that one you will also be doing the reaction in, but without the plastic covering. However, if you want to label it, go ahead!

The reason we are doing all of these controls, is that we want to show that it is not just the vinegar or just the baking soda, or just the chemical reaction causing our result. We want to prove it is the trapped carbon dioxide gas.

Prepare a piece of plastic wrap big enough to cover the mouth of the jar with a bit of extra down the sides so it can be sealed completely. Repeat for 4 jars. Also add an elastic band for each piece of plastic wrap.

Place plastic wrap on the air jar and secure it with an elastic.

Add 1/4 up of vinegar to the vinegar jar, then cover with plastic wrap and secure with an elastic.

Add 1 tablespoon of baking soda to the baking soda jar, cover with plastic wrap and secure with elastic.

Reaction Time!

This next step is easiest with two people. Have one person read with the plastic wrap and elastic. The other person will add the baking soda to the jar, then add the vinegar. VERY QUICKLY place the plastic wrap over the mouth of the jar and secure it with an elastic. We need to capture the gases from the reaction, so work fast!

Here comes the sun

Now place the jars in front of your heat source. Ensure they are positioned so they will all be heated evenly. We used a heat register/radiator to evenly apply heat. A windowsill in the bright sun would work well too. Leave the jars with the heat for 5 to 10 minutes. We tested at both the 5 minute and 10 minute mark.

This heat source is replicating the warming effect of the sun.

Chemical Reaction Comparison

While the four jars are warming, take your fifth jar. Add 1 tablespoon of baking soda and 1/4 cup of vinegar. Watch the bubbly reaction! After about 30 seconds take a temperature reading. What do you notice? Baking soda and vinegar is an endothermic reaction! This is extremely interesting in the context of this greater experiment.

Temperature check

After your jars are warmed, it is time to take temperature readings.

If you are using a non-contact infrared thermometer, have your students take temperature readings from each jar, we found it best to aim straight down into the jar.

If you are using a standard thermometer, make a small slit in the plastic top of each jar, just big enough to slip the thermometer in without letting too much air escape. Place a thermometer in each jar. Wait one minute, then remove the thermometer and check the temperature readings.

What do you notice about the temperature readings? Record your results!

Greenhouse Effect Results

The chemical reaction in the enclosed jar is warmer than all the other jars with plastic covering. Those control jars are all about the same temperature. The coldest jar is the chemical reaction with no plastic covering. So cool!

The Greenhouse Science

The chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar is an acid-base reaction. Baking soda is a base and vinegar is an acid. When we combine them, they react in a bubbly, endothermic reaction. Endothermic means it becomes colder during the reaction.

Here is the chemical formula of this reaction

C 2 H 4 O 2  + NaHCO 3  -> NaC 2 H 3 O 2  + H 2 O + CO 2 (g) vinegar + sodium bicarbonate -> sodium acetate + water + carbon dioxide(g)

The carbon dioxide is a gas, just like it is in the atmosphere, where it is one of the greenhouse gases.

In this experiment we are trapping the carbon dioxide gas in the jar. When heat is applied, the carbon dioxide traps more heat in the jar than our controls.

Where this became really interesting for us, was when the kids realized the reaction was endothermic, as demonstrated in our open chemical reaction jar. That means our jar with the trapped carbon dioxide not only trapped heat, but it trapped enough heat to counteract the endothermic reaction, and still make that jar warmer than the controls.

That is one powerhouse of a greenhouse effect!

Troubleshooting

If you have problems with this experiment there may be a few things to look at.

First, make sure your jars are being evenly heated. Depending on how you heat your jars, certain jars my be getting more heat than others. If you are using heat lamps, you may want to ensure you have one heat lamp per jar and place them equal distances from each jar.

If you used a standard thermometer, make sure your slit is not letting too much of the carbon dioxide out of the jar, it will take the heat with it.

When the reaction is triggered, make sure you act fast to get that plastic wrap on there and trap those gases!

Learning More About Climate Change

We really enjoy learning from NASA’s incredible resources. They have an entire site dedicated to climate and kids called Climate Kids that is packed with learning resources.

If you have Netflix, definitely look for any documentaries by David Attenborough . My tweens and teens have watched many of his documentaries and learned so much.

Tackle more Earth Day and Environmental Sciences projects with your kids, with our collection of Earth Day Activities .

Climate Change and Environmental Sciences Worksheets

Enjoy learning about our planet and start putting your lessons to work to protect our home. The more we know, the better we can all work to project our Earth.

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Modelling the greenhouse effect

In association with Nuffield Foundation

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Use this demonstration to illustrate the greenhouse effect and the role of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas

The demonstration includes two parts. In the first, students observe a model of the greenhouse effect in a greenhouse using transparent bottles containing air. In the second, they learn about the role of carbon dioxide by comparing the effects in two separate vessels containing air and carbon dioxide respectively.

The experiments in both parts demonstrate the greenhouse effect by comparing the temperature increases in suitable vessels containing the gases, on exposure to light from a powerful lamp.

Each part of the demonstration will take about 30 minutes. However, the second part can be started well before the first part has been completed if sufficient apparatus is available.

The experiments involve slow, gradual temperature increases. If the temperatures are monitored electronically, with data logging and a live display, the experiment can be allowed to proceed while the class carries on with other work. If ordinary thermometers or electronic thermometers with digital displays are used, the temperatures will have to be recorded at one minute intervals, requiring the attention of the class to time and record for the duration of the demonstrations.

For both parts

• Photoflood light bulb, 275 W, in a plain bulb holder (see notes 1 and 2 below)
• Temperature sensors with leads, 3, with data logger and computer display (see note 3)
• Plastic drink bottles, transparent, 1 dm 3 , x2 (see note 4)
• 2-hole bungs, to fit bottles (see note 4)
• Clock, with second hand
• Stand, boss and clamp, x2
• Beakers, 250 cm 3 , x2
• Black card discs, x2

Apparatus notes

• Photoflood bulbs are available from photographic suppliers on the internet, or from photography shops on the high street, at a cost of £10–15 each for a 275 W bulb. The bulb should be fitted in a plain bulb-holder suitably stabilised so that it stands securely on the demonstration bench, and is easily switched on and off by the demonstrator without disturbing the bulb.
• The photoflood bulb should be situated so that the three temperature sensors or thermometers can be placed equidistant from the bulb, as shown in figure 1 below.

Source: Royal Society of Chemistry

How to set up the apparatus to model the greenhouse effect in a greenhouse and compare temperature increases in each of the two bottles

• Check that all three temperature sensors show the same temperature on the computer display when placed in the same temperature environment. Fit two of the sensors through the rubber bungs that will fit into the drinks bottles. Each of the three temperature sensors should be wrapped with a lead (or prepared aluminium) foil ‘flag’. Each flag is made from a piece of lead foil about 3 x 2 cm such that after wrapping around the sensor, a flag approximately 1 cm wide and 2 cm high made of doubled foil is formed (see figure 2 below). The sensor should then be positioned so that the face of each flag will be perpendicular to the radiation from the bulb. The end result should be a set of three temperature sensors with flags that are as similar as possible. The sensors carrying their flags need to fit easily through the necks of the drinks bottles. The setting up of the datalogger and three temperature sensors will depend on the kit available in the school. The handbook for the datalogger will provide the necessary instructions. Suitable software should be used to display the temperature data as a function of time as three lines of different colour on screen(s) visible to the class. Two of the temperature sensors will be required again in part 2, but without the lead flags.
• The two drinks bottles for part 1 should be identical, colourless, transparent, PET plastic (recycling code 1) water bottles, fizzy drink bottles or similar, of 1 dm 3 capacity, capable of carrying a 2-hole rubber bung in the mouth (see figure 3). One hole is needed to carry the temperature sensor (or the thermometer if used), the other to allow air flow to prevent pressure build-up. One of the bottles should be painted matt black on one ‘side’ and allowed to dry thoroughly. The bottles should be secured in an upright position, without obscuring the light path from the lamp.

How to prepare the thermometers or temperature sensors and the half-painted bottle required for the first experiment

• Finally set up the apparatus for part 1 as in figure 1, clamping as necessary to ensure the arrangement is secure from accidental knocks, and at the appropriate point in the lesson, replace by the simple arrangement for part 2 as in figure 4. Note that the photoflood lamp is now positioned and clamped above the beakers, midway between them.

How to set up the apparatus to model the effect of carbon dioxide on temperature for the second experiment

• Lead foil pieces (TOXIC, DANGEROUS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT), about 3 cm x 2 cm, x3 (aluminium foil can be used as an alternative to lead foil but must be either painted black or darkened which happens after it has been in contact with food)
• Matt black paint (for example, blackboard paint)
• Source of carbon dioxide gas
• Methane (natural gas) (EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE)
• Pentane (EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE, HARMFUL, DANGEROUS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT), 1 cm 3
• Hexane (HIGHLY FLAMMABLE, HARMFUL, DANGEROUS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT), 1 cm 3

Health, safety and technical notes

• Read our standard health and safety guidance.
• Lead foil, Pb(s), (TOXIC, DANGEROUS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT) – see CLEAPSS Hazcard HC056 . In part 1 the lead foil pieces are for making the ‘flags’ around the temperature sensors (Note 3). The Lead foil can be replaced with darkened aluminium foil and the effect is still observed.
• Carbon dioxide, CO 2 (g) – see CLEAPSS Hazcard HC020a .  For use of a carbon dioxide cylinder also see Laboratory Handbook Section 9.9 about the safe storage and use of gas cylinders. If using solid carbon dioxide (dry ice), this should be obtained within 24 hours of the demonstration in substantially larger quantity than required for the experiment, and stored in a vented insulated container until required. All handling must be done using thermal gloves and handling tongs. If neither a carbon dioxide cylinder nor a supply of dry ice is available, carbon dioxide gas may be generated chemically – see these standard techniques for generating, collecting and testing gases . Replace the thistle funnel shown with a tap funnel or an unstoppered separating funnel. Use about 10 g of small marble chips (calcium carbonate) and about 100 cm 3 of hydrochloric acid (2 M) for the carbon dioxide generator. Add the acid a few cm 3 at a time to the marble chips to generate a steady stream of carbon dioxide. Either shortly before part 2 of the demonstration, or as part of the demonstration, allow a flow of carbon dioxide to displace the air from the beaker. Alternatively pieces of solid carbon dioxide can be allowed to evaporate in the bottom of the beaker.
• Methane (Natural gas), CH 4 (g), (EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE) – see CLEAPSS Hazcard HC045a .
• Pentane, C 5 H 12 (l), (EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE, HARMFUL, DANGEROUS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT) – see CLEAPSS Hazcard HC045a.
• Hexane, C 6 H 14 (l), (EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE, HARMFUL, DANGEROUS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT) – see CLEAPSS Hazcard HC045a.
• With the apparatus set up as in figure 1 above, start the datalogging programme with all three sensors at the same time (which should all show the same temperature), and immediately switch on the photoflood lamp.
• Allow the datalogging to proceed with the graphical display visible to the class. Ensure the class are aware of which graphical trace belongs to which sensor. In about 15 minutes, the three traces should level off, the ‘bare’ sensor showing a typical increase of around 5°C, the clear bottle about 8°C, and the blackened bottle about 13°C.
• If two further temperature sensors and a second datalogger are available, part 2 can be demonstrated while part 1 is running. Alternatively the class can proceed with other tasks until there is a clear result from part 1 on the display screen.
• Reset the datalogger and software to start again with inputs from two temperature sensors.
• Start the datalogger and switch on the lamp; the two traces should remain together, though showing a gradual rise.
• When this gradual rise levels off, introduce carbon dioxide as a steady flow into one of the beakers. The trace from that beaker should soon show a higher temperature than the beaker with only air – typically up to 8 degrees higher. If the gas flow is stopped, the carbon dioxide will slowly diffuse out of the beaker, replaced by air, and the temperature should begin to fall again.
• (Optional) Clear the carbon dioxide from its beaker, and repeat 1 and 2 above. Ensure all sources of ignition have been removed. Now introduce a slow stream of methane from the gas tap into the beaker and observe the effect on the temperature trace.
• (Optional) Again repeat 1 and 2 above and ensure all sources of ignition have been removed. Use a dropping pipette to drop about 1 cm 3 of the volatile liquid into the beaker. This will slowly evaporate, and the effect on the temperature trace can be followed as it does so.

Teaching notes

In a garden greenhouse, visible light passes through the glass and is absorbed by darker surfaces inside. This absorbed energy heats up the materials, also warming the surrounding air. But convection is restricted by the enclosing glass and the inside temperature of the greenhouse rises. This is the main cause of warming in a garden greenhouse.

However, in addition the warm surfaces re-radiate some of the absorbed energy, but at longer wavelengths in the infrared region of the spectrum. Some of this infra-red radiation is absorbed by glass and contributes to the warming of the greenhouse. It is this latter effect that is called the ‘greenhouse effect’. The greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere is caused by a number of gases that behave in a similar way to glass. They are transparent to visible light, but absorb in part of the infrared spectrum. Some of these gases are listed in the table. It can be seen that carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas because of its relatively high concentration in the atmosphere rather than its intrinsic greenhouse efficiency.

Gas	Relative greenhouse efficiency per molecule	Concentration in the atmosphere/ppm	Relative efficiency x concentration/ppm
Carbon dioxide	1	350	350
Methane	30	1.7	51
Dinitrogen	160	0.31	49.6
Ozone	2,000	0.06	120
CFC 11 (CCI3F)	21,000	0.00026	5.46
CFC 12 (CCI2F2)	25,000	0.00024	6

In part 1, the experiment demonstrates the situation in a greenhouse using a plastic bottle. It also shows the effect of a black surface absorbing the energy from visible light.

In part 2, however, replacing the plastic bottles with open beakers removes the restriction on convection. The difference in temperature rise between the two beakers comes mainly from absorption by the gases of the radiant (infra-red) energy from the lead discs at the bottom of the beakers

Water vapour, carbon dioxide and ozone are the most important of the greenhouse gases, the first two because of their relatively high concentration in the atmosphere rather than because of their intrinsic greenhouse efficiency – indeed water vapour accounts for more than a third of the overall greenhouse effect. However, methane also makes a significant contribution, and it is the increasing proportion of carbon dioxide, and to a lesser extent methane, that seems to be producing the effect of global warming.

Additional information

This is a resource from the  Practical Chemistry project , developed by the Nuffield Foundation and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Practical Chemistry activities accompany  Practical Physics  and  Practical Biology .

© Nuffield Foundation and the Royal Society of Chemistry

• 11-14 years
• 14-16 years
• Demonstrations
• Environment
• Environmental science

Specification

• Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere maintain temperatures on Earth high enough to support life. Water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gases.
• Describe the greenhouse effect in terms of the interaction of radiation with matter.
• 8.24 Describe how various gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour, absorb heat radiated from the Earth, subsequently releasing energy which keeps the Earth warm: this is known as the greenhouse effect
• C1.3.1 describe the greenhouse effect in terms of the interaction of radiation with matter
• C6.2c describe the greenhouse effect in terms of the interaction of radiation with matter within the atmosphere
• C6.3c describe the greenhouse effect in terms of the interaction of radiation with matter within the atmosphere
• 2.3.6 recall that the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 0.03% to 0.04% because of combustion of organic compounds and is believed to have caused global warming;
• 2.5.28 demonstrate knowledge that the combustion of fuels is a major source of atmospheric pollution due to: combustion of hydrocarbons producing carbon dioxide, which leads to the greenhouse effect causing sea level rises, flooding and climate change;…
• 2.5.26 demonstrate knowledge that the combustion of fuels is a major source of atmospheric pollution due to: combustion of hydrocarbons producing carbon dioxide, which leads to the greenhouse effect causing sea level rises, flooding and climate change…
• The greenhouse effect and the influence of human activity on it.
• Possible implications of increased greenhouse effect.
• 3. Illustrate how earth processes and human factors influence Earth’s climate, evaluate effects of climate change and initiatives that attempt to address those effects.

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Greenhouse effect experiment

In this activity pupils will undertake a controlled experiment to investigate how gases in the atmosphere affect the heat in an enclosed environment, by tracking the change in temperature of a glass jar containing carbon dioxide against a control jar. They will learn about the greenhouse effect and the role of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.

This activity could be used as a main lesson activity, to introduce the concept of the Earth’s atmosphere, or as part of a series of lessons investigating environmental issues and the effect of global warming.

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Please be aware that resources have been published on the website in the form that they were originally supplied. This means that procedures reflect general practice and standards applicable at the time resources were produced and cannot be assumed to be acceptable today. Website users are fully responsible for ensuring that any activity, including practical work, which they carry out is in accordance with current regulations related to health and safety and that an appropriate risk assessment has been carried out.

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Subject(s)	Climate Change, Design and technology, Science, Earth science
Age	7-11
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November 9, 2023

23 min read

The Woman Who Demonstrated the Greenhouse Effect

Eunice Newton Foote showed that carbon dioxide traps the heat of the sun in 1856, beating the so-called father of the greenhouse effect by at least three years. Why was she forgotten?

By Zoe Kurland , Katie Hafner , Elah Feder & The Lost Women of Science Initiative

Paula Mangin

In 1856, decades before the term “greenhouse gas” was coined, Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated the greenhouse effect in her home laboratory. She placed a glass cylinder full of carbon dioxide in sunlight and found that it heated up much more than a cylinder of ordinary air. Her conclusion: more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere results in a warmer planet.

Several years later a Irish scientist named John Tyndall conducted a far more complicated experiment that demonstrated the same effect and revealed how it worked. Today Tyndall is widely known as the man who discovered the greenhouse gas effect. There’s even a crater on the moon named for him! Newton Foote, meanwhile, was lost to history—until an amateur historian stumbled on her story.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

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[ New to this season of Lost Women of Science? Listen to the most recent episodes on  Flemmie Kittrell  and Rebecca Lee Crumpler . ]

Lost Women of Science is produced for the ear. Where possible, we recommend listening to the audio for the most accurate representation of what was said.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Zoe Kurland: About 12 years ago, Ray Sorenson was flipping through The Annual of Scientific Discovery of 1857. This is the kind of stuff Ray reads for fun, 19th Century science books and journals.

Ray Sorenson: You know, you buy a couple of those things, and you get hooked. I probably have a thousand publications that predate the Civil War. 

Zoe Kurland: The Annual of Scientific Discovery was kind of a yearbook of all the science happenings from the previous year. And as Ray was perusing this stimulating tome, as one does, one particular entry caught his attention. It was about experiments conducted by someone named Eunice Foote.

Ray Sorenson: Let’s see where do I have it? 

Zoe Kurland : He’s going to read us a few lines once he finds it.

Ray Sorenson: Ah, here it is. I think. I need my reading glasses. Hold on.

Zoe Kurland: So for context, what you’re about to hear is a write-up of a presentation of Eunice’s work that was given at a meeting in 1856. And Eunice didn’t get to read the paper herself at that meeting. A man actually read it for her. It was 1856, so you know.

Ray Sorenson: And I quote the whole thing: Professor Henry then read a paper by Mrs. Eunice Foote, prefacing it with a few words to the effect that science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true. Mrs. Foote had determined first that the action… [fades]

Zoe Kurland: The paper goes on to describe an experiment by this Eunice Foote, which she conducted in her home laboratory, showing that water vapor and carbon dioxide trapped more heat than other gasses. And her conclusion-

Ray Sorenson: An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a much higher temperature and if there once was… [fades]

Zoe Kurland: Ray realized this unknown woman, Eunice Foote, had demonstrated the greenhouse gas effect in 1856. Which was odd because as far as most people knew, the person who first demonstrated it was someone named John Tyndall. He’s been called the father of the greenhouse effect or even the father of climate science. But John Tyndall started his experiments in 1859, and what Ray was looking at suggested Eunice had demonstrated the effect at least three years before that.

So who was this woman? And why had Ray heard of John Tyndall but not of her?

Ray Sorenson: There's no record of her. So I started digging around trying to find out stuff. And then I started thinking, okay, well she's, you know, if she's the first one to do this, she needs to be given credit for it.

Zoe Kurland: Ray wrote up a short paper on his discovery, hoping it might inspire at least one researcher to  dig into the history of Eunice Foote. It went far beyond that. He got one, then another, and another.

Ray Sorenson: It's almost becoming competitive! [Laughs] 

Zoe Kurland: And today, we throw our hat in the ring with the story of Eunice: how the mother of the greenhouse gas effect got lost and found.

Katie Hafner: This is Lost Women of Science. I’m Katie Hafner, and today, I’m joined by Zoe Kurland, who brings us the story of Eunice Newton Foote.

Zoe Kurland: In 1856, Scientific American described the work of a female scientist. They start with the obligatory – you know how people think women can’t do science? Well, guess what! Given the opportunity, some totally can! Not in those exact words, but that’s the gist. And their example? Mrs. Eunice Foote.” The article goes on to describe Eunice’s recent experiments with gasses.

They write, quote, “The columns of the Scientific American have been oftentimes graced with articles on scientific subjects, by ladies, which would do honor to men of the highest scientific reputation; and the experiments of Mrs. Foot [sic] afford abundant evidence of the ability of woman to investigate any subject with originality and precision.”

Pretty glowing review of Eunice’s work.

Katie Hafner: And it just happens to be Scientific American, our esteemed publishing partner. Hey Jeff.

Zoe Kurland: Hello Jeff. So how did Eunice Newton Foote make this discovery, land in the pages of the very prestigious Scientific American, and then get almost instantly overwritten by John Tyndall? 

Katie Hafner: Yeah, I was going to ask that. How did that happen? I’ve never heard of that happening where men kind of take stuff over, but yeah, let’s hear the story.

Zoe Kurland: Alright, let’s take a step back. 

Eunice Newton was born in Goshen, Connecticut in 1819. Eunice’s father was a cattle runner, and Connecticut wasn’t exactly booming, so when Eunice was three years old, her father, Isaac -- yes, his name was Isaac Newton -- her mother Thirza, and her ten brothers and sisters, hit the road in a covered wagon and headed to Bloomfield, New York. Which turned out to be a lucky move for Eunice.

Sally Kohlstedt: New York between 1830 and 1860. I mean, it was the progressive dynamo of- of much of the United States.

Zoe Kurland: Sally Kohlstedt is a science historian and a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

Sally Kohlstedt: That's where the Underground Railroad went through to Canada. You know, that's where all these utopian religions were founded and things like the Oneida community with mixed marriages. So whether it was sex or religion or science or  civil rights, it was all, all being discussed there. It would've been fun to live there.

Zoe Kurland: And Eunice’s family invested in her education. They even sent her to  the first school in the country founded to provide young women with an education comparable to that of college-educated young men: The Troy Female Seminary.

And not only that, the Troy Female Seminary was right next to Rensselaer Polytechnic – the premiere science institute in the country at the time. And Troy students could go over there and take classes sometimes.

We’ve seen different accounts of exactly what age she was when she attended, but this would have been around the 1830s. A pretty big opportunity for a woman to get at the time.

Sally Kohlstedt: So she would have had a very unusual set of access points to sort of learn about and know what was going on.

Zoe Kurland: But even with this education, there was a feeling among the students at the Troy Seminary, documented in their letters, that all of this science education was great, but it was also sort of a tease.

John Perlin: And the biggest complaint was what the hell, we’re learning all the scientific stuff and then when we graduate, all available to us will be, you know, looking pretty.

Zoe Kurland: John Perlin teaches physics at UC Santa Barbara. He’s writing a book about Eunice.

John Perlin: You know, what outlet would we have because of the times. 

Zoe Kurland: Even though the Troy School was different, these learned women still found themselves graduating into a world where they would be expected to cook and clean and needlepoint and smell nice and whatever. The “woman’s sphere” was still very much the “private sphere” -- the home. But Eunice managed to escape that life. In part, because of the man she married.

It all goes back to her father, Isaac Newton, the homesteader, and his perennial financial problems. Upstate New York hadn’t worked out much better than Connecticut for Isaac. He’d made some bad financial decisions, and then he passed away in 1835, leaving his family with a pile of debt. Soon, the Newton farm was about to go into foreclosure. 

But Amanda, Eunice’s older sister, was like, I’m going to fix this and hired an attorney. One Elisha Foote. And yes, that is a man’s name. Our senior producer, Elah, tells us it was actually the name of her uncle.

John Perlin: He was ten years older than Eunice, and he was the district attorney of Seneca Falls. And he was moonlighting in Canandaigua where there was a federal court. And he took on their case, won it, and also won the hand of Eunice. 

Zoe Kurland: In 1841, Eunice and Elisha got married. She was twenty-two years old and he was thirty-two. And they moved to Seneca Falls, New York, where Eunice soon found herself in the epicenter of the American women’s rights movement. One of their neighbors was Elizabeth Cady Stanton herself. Eunice got to know her just as Elizabeth’s star was beginning to rise. 

They actually had a few connections. Elisha had studied law under Daniel Cady, Elizabeth’s father, and Eunice and Elizabeth had both attended the progressive Troy Female Seminary. We don’t know exactly how close they were, but living in Seneca Falls, they definitely knew each other.

Sally Kohlstedt: It's a very tiny town. You're really struck by how small the town is but therefore, how intimate it would've been for women to know each other. 

Zoe Kurland: So in 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton co-organized the country’s first ever women’s rights convention right there in Seneca Falls, Eunice was there. Elisha too. 

Three-hundred people in all attended, mostly locals. At the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott presented the Declaration of Sentiments, a list of demands and resolutions to be put forward for signatures, demands like the right to vote. It was modeled after the Declaration of Independence. But in the opening, it says “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal” and that basically, women were fed up with the tyranny of men.

Eunice’s name appears in the ladies section, right under Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s, and Elisha’s in the gentlemen’s, right above Frederick Douglass.

Katie Hafner: What do you know, Frederick Douglass makes a cameo appearance in this episode. He’s also all over another episode on Dr. Sarah Loguen Fraser.

Zoe Kurland: Well, you know, cool people always know what parties to show up to, so I’m not surprised. 

Katie Hafner: That’s true.

Zoe Kurland: So Eunice is in a really good place for a woman to be at this point in time.

Sally Kohlstedt:  She was immersed in a world that accepted her that gave herself confidence, I think, and that took her seriously. I think that's the important point that I see as I look back at her life. I thought some part of it is you have to be really pretty brilliant and pretty smart and pretty persistent to do that kind of work. On the other hand, if you're not at all supported, it can be extremely tough. And she doesn't seem to have had that problem.

Zoe Kurland: Okay, she’s an early feminist with a feminist husband. She has a great education. And then, she runs a little experiment in her home lab -- with huge ramifications.

That’s after the break.

Zoe Kurland: Elisha and Eunice were a bit of a power couple in Seneca Falls. They had a family together. They did feminism together. And they were both inventors and often collaborators. Among their inventions over the years were: a rubber shoe insert, a paper-making machine, an innovative ice skate.

Katie Hafner: This is incredible. I love people who invent things.

Zoe Kurland: I mean, not to romanticize them too much, ‘cause this is like the 1800s, I don’t want to be back there. But, this is hot. I love this as a couple activity. 

Katie Hafner: Well, exactly. 

Zoe Kurland: But, yes, so one of their inventions was an early thermostat for stoves. John Perlin again.

John Perlin: They mutually developed a metallic piece for the stove, which could tell when the cook stove was getting too hot or too cold, and it would, you know, either cause the metal to constrict or expand and that would change the draft of the stove.

Zoe Kurland: Remember this stove bit, it’s going to become important. 

Katie Hafner: Okay.

Zoe Kurland: Okay, so they had their feminism, their inventions. They were also tapped into the world of scientific research and built themselves a home laboratory.

Sally Kohlstedt: The fact that she conducted her experiments at home, on the one hand, is very impressive.

Zoe Kurland: Historian Sally Kohlstedt again.

Sally Kohlstedt: On the other hand, that was not an uncommon thing. Even in the very wealthy homes in England in the 19th century, they were doing what was called kind of estate science. Lord Kelvin, for example, did all of his work at home. So she was following a model of educated people who were just curious.

Zoe Kurland: Curious about the big questions: How the planet worked. How it had changed over the years. A picture was emerging of a changing earth. Its rocks, its animals, and the temperature were all in flux.

Sally Kohlstedt: Somehow the dinosaurs lived in a different world where it was hotter, warmer, probably more moist, had a lot of ferns. And so she would have know that somehow the world had changed. What made it change? How did it work?

Zoe Kurland: In 1856, Eunice set up a simple home experiment that would help answer that question.

Katharine Hayhoe: What she was interested in in 1856 was looking at the heat trapping properties of gasses.

Zoe Kurland: That’s Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher and chief scientist at the nature conservancy. 

Katharine Hayhoe: And she was aware that these heat trapping gasses like carbon dioxide were present in the atmosphere and she wanted to see what effect, um, energy from the sun had on those, as well as infrared energy.

Zoe Kurland: Eunice got some glass cylinders, stuck a thermometer inside each one, and filled them up with different types of gasses. One cylinder had just regular air, so the usual mix of gasses found in our atmosphere. Another had just carbon dioxide. One had dry air, another humid air. And then, she put some in the sun and some in the shade.

And she found a few things. When exposed to sunlight, damp air got hotter than dry air.  Oxygen heated up a bit more than hydrogen. But the biggest difference was between regular air and carbon dioxide. A tube of regular air in the sun heated up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit; carbon dioxide shot up to 120. That’s 38 Celsius versus 49 for our centigrade friends.

Katie Hafner: She was doing it what year? Are we in the 1850s now?

Zoe Kurland: Yeah, this is 1856.

Katie Hafner: Wow, okay. 

Zoe Kurland: So this was a fun, basic physics experiment. But Eunice was looking at the bigger picture, what this means for the planet. What if, at another point in time, the Earth’s atmosphere had more carbon dioxide in it? And here are her very words, written in 1856: An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature.

So, for background -- the real atmosphere is a mix of gasses, mostly nitrogen. Carbon dioxide makes up a tiny proportion of it. But, Eunice concluded that if there was a little more or less carbon dioxide, it could shift the whole planet's temperature. And she also wrote that this could explain why the Earth had been warmer or colder at different points in its history.

Bottom line: more carbon dioxide meant a warmer climate.

Katharine Hayhoe: Which, as we now know, climate change is caused by heat trapping gasses building up in the atmosphere, essentially wrapping an extra blanket around the planet. I mean, that is such a basic, fundamental concept in climate science. And here she was in the 1850s, clearly explaining that to the scientists of the day.

Zoe Kurland: So Eunice submitted her findings to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or the AAAS, the country’s first national science association. 

Back then, the AAAS was a traveling show – a roving meeting of science superstars, moving from major city to major city, spreading the word about new scientific advancements and discoveries. They’d be greeted with feasts and fanfare, and just a lot of excitement. 

Sally Kohlstedt: It was the place if you wanted to meet and greet other people who were in your field. Also, you wanted to get your ideas up because the papers were gonna cover it. Your ideas would get out in public to the larger public as well as in the proceedings if you were published there. So yes, it was the place to go. 

Zoe Kurland: But science was still a total boys club, and the AAAS was no exception. Women were allowed in the audience, but a woman had never presented before.

Sally Kohlstedt: Men's domain was the public domain. Women's domain was the domestic domain. So a woman who spoke out, and there were certainly some women who were quote “notorious” because they did public speaking, speaking out in public could be a negative on your capacity to be recognized and prominent in social circles. So women were sort of policing themselves as much as they were being policed.

Zoe Kurland: This is actually a really relatable feeling even if it’s not the same level as it was back in the 1800s, I still feel that impulse to make myself small or be modest in certain situations. No one’s telling me to be small, necessarily, but I still find myself leaning towards that. 

Katie Hafner: Yeah, I totally know what you mean. And think about if you were back in the 1800s, how that would be magnified many, many times-

Zoe Kurland: Totally.

Katie Hafner: -that impulse.

Sally Kohlstedt: And so she very well might have been hesitant to present the material herself because that wouldn't have been womanly. But she could ask Joseph Henry to do it.

Zoe Kurland: Eunice’s husband, Elisha, had studied with a man named Joseph Henry, a physicist and one of the science luminaries of the day, well not just a luminary, actually.

Sally Kohlstedt: Joseph Henry was the guy. He was the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. And the Smithsonian Institution in the 1850s was the leading scientific organization in the country.

Zoe Kurland: So why would Joseph Henry agree to present Eunice’s paper? We’re not sure, but Joseph Henry had four daughters and no sons.

Sally Kohlstedt: He very well may have appreciated what young women could do. On the other hand, he's no feminist. So I think he has kind of ambivalent feelings about women in their capacity. And so he probably appreciated the fact that she was gonna be reticent to do her own paper, but also had a brain that was worth listening to. 

Zoe Kurland: So one August day in Albany, Eunice walked into the AAAS convention, took her seat alongside America’s elite scientists, and watched a man present her research.

In what seems to be the style of the time, Joseph Henry started off with the obligatory acknowledgement that this was the work of a woman scientist and women can do science. And then went on to describe her experiment. 

Eunice’s paper didn’t make it into the official conference proceedings, but she formally published it a few months later, and her research made a bit of a splash.

She got a write-up in the Annual of Scientific Discovery, where Ray Sorenson first came across her, and she made it into a German publication, where they mistook her for a man, calling her Herr Foote. 

Katie Hafner: Herr Foote? Mr. Foote!

Zoe Kurland: Which is, you know, I mean, okay. 

And of course, she had that glowing writeup in Scientific American. But that’s kind of it. She fades away. You don’t see her popping up in scientific journals, and certainly no one’s calling her the “mother of climate science.”

Katie Hafner: So what happened? Did she just give it all up and have kids?

Zoe Kurland: Well, a few years after Eunice published her research, an Irish scientist named John Tyndall started looking into similar questions. 

Sally Kohlstedt: As I understand Tyndall, he's a very egotistical kind of guy. He's a very busy guy. He's making money as a lecturer and doing other things.

Zoe Kurland: John Tyndall was working as a professor of natural philosophy at The Royal Institution in London, publishing research in European journals. And we’re not sure to what extent he was paying attention to what Eunice was up to across the pond, or vice versa, but- 

Sally Kohlstedt: There's a lot of international exchange. At the same time, these Americans are still feeling a little bit like the little brother.

So in the late 1850s, John cooked up an experiment of his own, and the basic ingredients were a lot like Eunice’s: gasses, heat and thermometers. But if Eunice’s backyard experiment was a kind of a Toyota Camry: reliable, simple, a good starting point -- can you tell my first car was a Toyota Camry?

Katie Hafner: Oh, it was?

Zoe Kurland: Yes.

Katie Hafner: Mine was a VW Rabbit just saying,

Zoe Kurland: First cars, memories. Anyways, John Tyndall’s experiment though was not a Camry. It was a Rolls Royce.

He had all of the big time equipment of the day, assistants helping him in the lab, and all of that helps him do something Eunice wasn’t able to do. Because even though Eunice had demonstrated the greenhouse gas effect, she didn’t know why it was happening. Why did some gasses heat up so much more than others? That’s where John Tyndall comes in.

Katie Hafner: Okay, I'm on the edge of my seat here, quite honestly.

Zoe Kurland: John was able to take Eunice’s experiment to the next level. Instead of putting his gasses in the sun, his heat source was a copper cube filled with boiling water. Like any hot object, it was giving off radiant heat -- what we’d now call long-wave infrared radiation. 

Every object that contains heat radiates it out -- you, your shoes, the earth. And greenhouse gasses are ones that are extra good at absorbing that radiated heat. Tyndall was able to figure that out. He could measure how much radiation they were absorbing using a spectrometer he built himself. He also showed that sunlight could easily pass through gasses.

And so while Eunice could only say that for some reason gasses got extra hot in the sun, John Tyndall figured out why. 

As he wrote: "The atmosphere admits of the entrance of the solar heat, but checks its exit, and the result is a tendency to accumulate heat at the surface of the planet." 

And like Eunice, he later wrote that changing concentrations of these gasses would explain the fluctuating temperatures of the planet. So points to John Tyndall! But still, Eunice, with her very basic home lab, figured out that these gasses trapped heat and deduced the implications for the planet. I mean, she demonstrated the greenhouse gas effect before John Tyndall.

Sally Kohlstedt: What's interesting is the contrast between his operation and her operation in her own home working with very limited equipment, and yet she does reach this significant conclusion, so I find that makes her even more interesting.

Katie Hafner: And was he aware of what she had done?

Zoe Kurland: Well, that is a huge point of contention for the historians. John Perlin is convinced that he was. They were clearly interested in similar topics. There was some overlap in where they were publishing. And in one case, John Tyndall was editing a magazine that reprinted an article by Elisha Foote, and that article had originally appeared right next to Eunice’s paper.

Katie Hafner: So, one could presume that he saw her work.

Zoe Kurland: It’s like such speculation, but it's very possible that he saw her work and maybe got a little bit of an idea, which people are inspired by one another, but we do know of at least one other instance where John Tyndall failed to credit someone’s influence on his work. He was actually called out for it in a national magazine that accused him of stealing credit from our dear friend Joseph Henry. That time, the dispute was about research on sound waves. But still, that doesn’t look great for his case with Eunice.

Sally Kohlstedt: On the other hand, in the history of science, there's a lot of what we call simultaneous discoveries. Sometimes at two different places in two different ways, two scholars do the same thing. People have written books about simultaneous discovery. So, so that goes on. And so it's possible that Tyndall was there asking many of the same questions because those are the questions.

Zoe Kurland: And by the way, if we’re going to debate who gets credit for discovering the greenhouse gas effect, well, John and Eunice have some competition.

In 1824 -- so three decades before either of their experiments -- the mathematician Joseph Fourier was thinking about the surface of the Earth, why it isn’t much colder. He figured it should be freezing, floating around in space. The heat it was getting from the sun alone couldn’t explain how warm it was. Or the heat from inside the earth. So what was it? The answer: the atmosphere. An insulating blanket that let the heat of the sun in and then trapped it inside. 

He didn’t offer any equations. It was yet another scientist, Claude Pouillet, who actually crunched some numbers a decade later. So you have Joseph figuring out that the atmosphere traps heat, then Claude doing the math, then Eunice Foote actually demonstrating that some gasses trap more heat than others. And then John Tyndall figuring out why. And trust me, that’s not the whole list of people who contributed to the concept of greenhouse gasses. So who quote “discovered” the greenhouse gas effect? Who gets credit for being first? 

It’s not easy to answer. But the least we can do is acknowledge people’s contributions. And John Tyndall, in the opening paper, did note the contributions of Joseph Fourier, Claude Pouillet and a couple of others. He did not mention Eunice Newton Foote. So why would he do that? Well, there’s always the chance he really hadn’t heard of her. She had a few factors working against her.

Sally Kohlstedt: She was rural, she was not connected, she was a woman, she was in America. All of those things probably contributed to a certain amount of invisibility.

Zoe Kurland: Another factor working against her? By the time John Tyndall had published his paper, Eunice had moved on. She was looking at other scientific questions. A year after Joseph Henry presented her paper at AAAS, he presented another paper from Eunice about how air generated static electricity.

Eunice might have also been distracted by a big lawsuit Elisha had undertaken on their behalf. Remember that thermostat I told you not to forget about? 

Katie Hafner : The stove thermostat? 

Zoe Kurland: Yes, yes, the very one.

Katie Hafner : Uh huh.

Zoe Kurland: Well, they had a patent for that, but a lot of people were interested in thermostats back then.

John Perlin: All these people start to infringe on the patent.

Zoe Kurland: John Perlin again. 

John Perlin: And Elisha, who was an attorney, took the case of all these infringers, all the way up to the Supreme Court. And so Elisha wins the case, right? And so all these people who were infringers were forced to give the Footes, you know, all the money that they received in profits from stealing the invention.

Zoe Kurland: The defendants were ordered to pay the Footes over sixty-thousand dollars. That’s today’s equivalent of over 2 million dollars. 

John Perlin: So Eunice turns from scientist to becoming the matron of wealth.

Zoe Kurland: And at this point, no one’s talking about the great scientist Eunice Newton Foote. When her daughter married John Henderson, the senator responsible for the 14th Amendment, there was a writeup in the paper. It named the father of the bride, Elisha Foote, and described him as the head of the Appeal Board at the Patent Office. And the article also mentions the mother, Eunice Foote, described as wearing a lilac silk dress. 

Katie Hafner: Yeah, that’s uh, that’s interesting. Um, I mean, this dress sounds really nice. 

Zoe Kurland: I mean, it sounds beautiful. Yeah. 

There aren’t many records of more science that Eunice did, besides that one presentation at AAAS. But she continued inventing into her forties. She filed a patent in her own name on that rubber shoe insert -- it was intended to quote “prevent the squeaking of boots and shoes." She’s very practical.

Katie Hafner: Love the rubber shoe insert. 

Zoe Kurland: She also developed a new cylinder-type of paper-making machine that lowered the cost of manufacturing. And if she didn’t have a life of scientific glory, it sounds like she still had an intellectually stimulating life, and a wonderfully ordinary one.

In a letter archived by the Smithsonian written in the 1870s, Eunice wrote to her daughter. In the letter, she talks about buying dresses, spending time with her grandson, running her household and finding the dining room girl dead drunk on the floor. She’s just thinking about regular degular, mundane, sometimes gossipy, life stuff. 

Eunice Newton Foote died in 1888 at age 69, a few years after Elisha. And for more than a century, she was almost entirely forgotten.

John Tyndall’s legacy, meanwhile, lived on -- and how! People named so much stuff after this man: Tyndall National Institute in Ireland, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United Kingdom, Mount Tyndall in California and Mount Tyndall, again, in Australia, the Tyndall Glaciers in Colorado and Chile. He even got a crater on the moon named after him.

Katie Hafner: Wait, people have craters on the moon named after them?

Zoe Kurland: Yes, we can get you one. 

His death, John Tyndall’s death, on the other hand, not so glamorous. John Tyndall’s wife killed him by giving him an overdose of his medicine.

Katie Hafner: What? You’ve gotta be kidding. Wait.

Zoe Kurland: I know.

Katie Hafner: She actually- was she convicted?

Zoe Kurland: No, she told everyone it was an accident. But based on what we know of Tyndall, I, I, I can't imagine he was such a peach as a husband.

Katie Hafner: My God. So back to Eunice. Why do you think she receded that way? Because of Tyndall?

Zoe Kurland: I don't think that it was because of Tyndall. I- I honestly think that she was content.

Sally Kohlstedt: Ultimately, my assumption is that she followed her own instincts. Created a good life, but wasn't interested necessarily in becoming someone who could be called the mother of anything in terms of science itself. Uh, but she wanted to make a contribution. I mean, that's kind of the way most of those 19th Century scientists thought. Can I make a contribution to knowledge? 

Zoe Kurland: Like, as you know, she was curious about things. She had a home laboratory. She was able to patent stuff. And she had a supportive husband, two daughters and grandkids. She had a life that made sense to her. And I don't know that she wanted for anything else. 

But thanks to Ray Sorensen and the many enthusiasts that have followed, Eunice is finally getting her day. Her name is out there. Like, really, out there. On a break between reading scientific journals from the 1800s, Ray Sorenson was watching Jeopardy and- 

Ray Sorenson: I saw something about women scientists, so I paid attention to it. 

Jeopardy Contestant 1: Women of science 400. 

Zoe Kurland: And he heard a familiar name. 

Ken Jennings: Eunice Foote's circumstances affecting the heat of the sun's rays foreshadowed the study of this effect. Alec.

Jeopardy Contestant 2: What is global warming?

Ken Jennings: No. Vince. 

Jeopardy Contestant 1: What is the greenhouse effect? 

Ken Jennings: That's the specific effect, yes. 

Ray Sorenson: That's probably the single biggest highlight. My name did not get mentioned in the Jeopardy episode, but yeah, that's okay.

Katie Hafner: This episode of Lost Women of Science was hosted by me, Katie Hafner.

Zoe Kurland: And me, Zoe Kurland. It was produced by me with our senior producer, Elah Feder. We had fact checking help from Danya AbdelHameid. Lizzie Younan composed all of our music. We had sound design from Rebecca Cunnigham, as well as from Hans Hsu who mastered this episode.

Katie Hafner: We want to thank Jeff Delviscio at our publishing partner, Scientific American, and my co-executive producer Amy Scharf and our senior managing editor Deborah Unger.

Zoe Kurland: Thanks also to Martha Weiss for contacting us about Eunice Newton Foote in the first place

Katie Hafner: Lost Women of Science is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Schmidt Futures. We're distributed by PRX. 

You can find transcripts of all of our episodes on our website, lostwomenofscience.org, as well as some very fascinating further reading. So If you want to learn more about Eunice’s work, go to the website. Again, it’s lostwomenofscience.org. And do not forget to hit that all-important donate button.

See you next week.

Zoe Kurland

Katie Hafner

Zoe Kurland , producer

Elah Feder , senior producer

Ray Sorenson, retired petroleum geologist and amateur historian

Sally Kohlstedt , science historian and professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota

John Perlin , author and lecturer who has been researching the story of Eunice Newton Foote

Katharine Hayhoe , climate scientist and chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy

FURTHER READING

A nnual of Scientific Discovery, Year-Book of Facts in Science and Art, 1857, Gould and Lincoln, Boston, 1857. Write-up of the 1856 talk at AAAS, where a man named Joseph Henry read Eunice’s paper for her.

On the Heat in the Sun’s Rays, Eunice Foote, The Journal of Science, 1856 

Eunice Foote’s Pioneering Research on co2 and Climate Warming , Ray Sorenson, AAPG Datapages, Search and Discovery, January 2011. 

“Who discovered the greenhouse effect?” Sir Roland Jackson, The Royal Institution, May 2019. 

Grade Level

Climate literacy principles, energy literacy principles, demos & experiments.

What Is the Greenhouse Effect?

Watch this video to learn about the greenhouse effect! Click here to download this video (1920x1080, 105 MB, video/mp4). Click here to download this video about the greenhouse effect in Spanish (1920x1080, 154 MB, video/mp4).

How does the greenhouse effect work?

As you might expect from the name, the greenhouse effect works … like a greenhouse! A greenhouse is a building with glass walls and a glass roof. Greenhouses are used to grow plants, such as tomatoes and tropical flowers.

A greenhouse stays warm inside, even during the winter. In the daytime, sunlight shines into the greenhouse and warms the plants and air inside. At nighttime, it's colder outside, but the greenhouse stays pretty warm inside. That's because the glass walls of the greenhouse trap the Sun's heat.

A greenhouse captures heat from the Sun during the day. Its glass walls trap the Sun's heat, which keeps plants inside the greenhouse warm — even on cold nights. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The greenhouse effect works much the same way on Earth. Gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide , trap heat similar to the glass roof of a greenhouse. These heat-trapping gases are called greenhouse gases .

During the day, the Sun shines through the atmosphere. Earth's surface warms up in the sunlight. At night, Earth's surface cools, releasing heat back into the air. But some of the heat is trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That's what keeps our Earth a warm and cozy 58 degrees Fahrenheit (14 degrees Celsius), on average.

Earth's atmosphere traps some of the Sun's heat, preventing it from escaping back into space at night. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

How are humans impacting the greenhouse effect?

Human activities are changing Earth's natural greenhouse effect. Burning fossil fuels like coal and oil puts more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.

NASA has observed increases in the amount of carbon dioxide and some other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Too much of these greenhouse gases can cause Earth's atmosphere to trap more and more heat. This causes Earth to warm up.

What reduces the greenhouse effect on Earth?

Just like a glass greenhouse, Earth's greenhouse is also full of plants! Plants can help to balance the greenhouse effect on Earth. All plants — from giant trees to tiny phytoplankton in the ocean — take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.

The ocean also absorbs a lot of excess carbon dioxide in the air. Unfortunately, the increased carbon dioxide in the ocean changes the water, making it more acidic. This is called ocean acidification .

More acidic water can be harmful to many ocean creatures, such as certain shellfish and coral. Warming oceans — from too many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — can also be harmful to these organisms. Warmer waters are a main cause of coral bleaching .

This photograph shows a bleached brain coral. A main cause of coral bleaching is warming oceans. Ocean acidification also stresses coral reef communities. Credit: NOAA

The Greenhouse Effect and our Planet

The greenhouse effect happens when certain gases, which are known as greenhouse gases, accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), ozone (O 3 ), and fluorinated gases.

Biology, Ecology, Earth Science, Geography, Human Geography

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The greenhouse effect happens when certain gases , which are known as greenhouse gases , accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere . Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), ozone (O 3 ), and fluorinated gases.

Greenhouse gases allow the sun’s light to shine onto Earth’s surface, and then the gases, such as ozone, trap the heat that reflects back from the surface inside Earth’s atmosphere. The gases act like the glass walls of a greenhouse—thus the name, greenhouse gas

According to scientists, the average temperature of Earth would drop from 14˚C (57˚F) to as low as –18˚C (–0.4˚F), without the greenhouse effect.

Some greenhouse gases come from natural sources, for example, evaporation  adds water vapor to the atmosphere. Animals and plants release carbon dioxide when they respire, or breathe. Methane is released naturally from decomposition. There is evidence that suggests methane is released in low-oxygen environments , such as  swamps or landfills . Volcanoes —both on land and under the ocean —release greenhouse gases, so periods of high volcanic activity tend to be warmer.

Since the  Industrial Revolution  of the late 1700s and early 1800s, people have been releasing larger quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That amount has skyrocketed in the past century. Greenhouse gas emissions increased 70 percent between 1970 and 2004. Emissions of CO 2 , rose by about 80 percent during that time.

The amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere far exceeds the naturally occurring range seen during the last 650,000 years.

Most of the CO 2 that people put into the atmosphere comes from burning  fossil fuels . Cars, trucks, t rains , and planes all burn fossil fuels. Many electric power plants do as well. Another way humans release CO 2 into the atmosphere is by cutting down  forests , because trees contain large amounts of carbon.

People add methane to the atmosphere through  livestock  farming, landfills, and fossil fuel production such as  coal mining  and natural gas processing. Nitrous oxide comes from  agriculture  and fossil fuel burning. Fluorinated gases include chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),  hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). They are produced during the manufacturing of refrigeration and cooling products and through aerosols.

All of these human activities add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. As the level of these gases rises, so does the temperature of Earth. The rise in Earth’s average temperature contributed to by human activity is known as  global warming .

The Greenhouse Effect and Climate Change Even slight increases in average global temperatures can have huge effects.

Perhaps the biggest, most obvious effect is that  glaciers and  ice caps melt faster than usual. The  meltwater  drains into the oceans, causing  sea levels to rise.

Glaciers and ice caps cover about 10 percent of the world’s landmasses. They hold between 70 and 75 percent of the world’s  freshwater . If all of this ice melted, sea levels would rise by about 70 meters (230 feet).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that the global sea level rose about 1.8 millimeters (0.07 inches) per year from 1961 to 1993, and about 3.1 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year since 1993.

Rising sea levels cause  flooding in  coastal cities, which could displace millions of people in low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, the U.S. state of Florida, and the Netherlands.

Millions more people in countries like Bolivia, Peru, and India depend on glacial meltwater for drinking,  irrigation , and  hydroelectric power . Rapid loss of these glaciers would devastate those countries.

Greenhouse gas emissions affect more than just temperature. Another effect involves changes in  precipitation , such as rain and  snow .

Over the course of the 20th century, precipitation increased in eastern parts of North and South America, northern Europe, and northern and central Asia. However, it has decreased in parts of Africa, the Mediterranean, and southern Asia.

As climates change, so do the habitats for living things. Animals that are adapted to a certain climate may become threatened. Many human societies depend on predictable rain patterns in order to grow specific  crops for food, clothing, and trade. If the climate of an area changes, the people who live there may no longer be able to grow the crops they depend on for survival. Some scientists also worry that tropical diseases will expand their ranges into what are now more temperate regions if the temperatures of those areas increase.

Most climate scientists agree that we must reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Ways to do this, include:

• driving less, using public transportation , carpooling, walking, or riding a bike.
• flying less—airplanes produce huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
• reducing, reusing, and recycling.
• planting a tree—trees absorb carbon dioxide, keeping it out of the atmosphere.
• using less  electricity .
• eating less meat—cows are one of the biggest methane producers.
• supporting alternative energy sources that don’t burn fossil fuels.

Artificial Gas

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the only greenhouse gases not created by nature. They are created through refrigeration and aerosol cans.

CFCs, used mostly as refrigerants, are chemicals that were developed in the late 19th century and came into wide use in the mid-20th century.

Other greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are emitted by human activity, at an unnatural and unsustainable level, but the molecules do occur naturally in Earth's atmosphere.

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Greenhouse Effect

• Human Population & Impacts
• Climate Change

Resource Type

Description.

This animation provides an overview of the greenhouse effect, a process that warms the atmosphere and surface of Earth.

Some of the sunlight absorbed by Earth is reemitted as infrared radiation. As shown in the animation, this radiation is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane. The greenhouse gases reradiate some of the radiation back to Earth, which warms the planet’s surface.

The greenhouse effect is a natural process that has maintained Earth’s temperature at a habitable level. However, human activities — in particular, the burning of fossil fuels — release additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These additional gases increase the greenhouse effect, making Earth warmer than usual.

This animation is based on a clip from a 2012 Holiday Lecture Series, Changing Planet: Past, Present, Future . Depending on students’ background, it may be helpful to pause the animation at various points to discuss different components of the greenhouse effect.

atmosphere, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), climate, greenhouse gas, methane (CH 4 ), radiation, solar energy, temperature, water vapor

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The resource is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license . No rights are granted to use HHMI’s or BioInteractive’s names or logos independent from this Resource or in any derivative works.

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New to Climate Change?

Greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gases are gases—like carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane, and nitrous oxide—that keep the Earth warmer than it would be without them. The reason they warm the Earth has to do with the way energy enters and leaves our atmosphere . When energy from the sun first reaches us, it does so mainly as light. But when that same energy leaves the Earth, it does so as infrared radiation, which we experience as heat. Greenhouse gases reflect infrared radiation, so some of the heat leaving the Earth bounces off the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and comes back to the Earth’s surface. This is called the “greenhouse effect,” in a comparison to the heat-trapping glass on a greenhouse.

The greenhouse effect is not a bad thing. Without it, our planet would be too cold for life as we know it. But if the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere changes, the strength of the greenhouse effect changes too. This is the cause of human-made climate change: by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, we are trapping more heat, and the entire planet gets warmer.

The focus on “carbon”

For climate change, the most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, which is why you hear so many references to “carbon” when people talk about climate change. There are three main reasons CO 2 is so central to the global warming happening today. First, there is just so much of it: we now add over 35 billion tons of CO 2 to the atmosphere every year, mostly by burning carbon-rich fuel like coal and oil that had previously been trapped in the ground. Second, it lasts a long time in the atmosphere. The CO 2 we emit today will stay above us reflecting heat for hundreds of years. This means that, even if we stop all new CO 2 emissions tomorrow, it will take many lifetimes before the warming effect of our past emissions fades away.

Finally, many different industries rely on carbon-rich fuels or other processes that give off CO 2 . That includes burning fossil fuels for electricity and heat and to power our vehicles, but it also includes manufacturing concrete and steel , the refining process for raw oil and gas, fermentation (for instance, to make alcohol or pharmaceuticals), and the decay of plant matter (like after trees are cut down ). All of these sectors can make changes to emit less CO 2 , but the same solutions won’t work for all of them.

 

Greenhouse gas	CO equivalents	Description
Water vapor	0	The most common greenhouse gas is actually water vapor, like in clouds. But because water vapor quickly leaves the atmosphere as rain, we don’t have to worry about our “water emissions.” On the other hand, warmer air can hold more water vapor without causing a rainstorm. So as the planet warms, we will tend to have more water in the atmosphere at a time—and that does heat the planet.
Methane	28	The number-two cause of climate change is methane, the main part of natural gas. Methane reflects about 100 times as much heat as CO , but its lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter: about 10 years. Methane is an especially hard greenhouse gas to measure, because most emissions don’t come from industrial plants. Instead, they come from livestock, changes in forests and wetlands, and leaks from gas wells and pipes.
Nitrous oxide	273	Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas that lasts for over 100 years in the atmosphere. It is best known as laughing gas, but that kind of commercial use makes up only a tiny part of our emissions. By far the biggest way we add nitrous oxide to the atmosphere is by growing crops with nitrogen-based fertilizers.
Fluorinated gases	Up to 14,600	Fluorinated gases—most commonly hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs—are used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and a variety of industrial processes. There are many of these gases, and most have a very large warming effect: one, HFC-23, is counted as 14,600 CO2 equivalents.

Updated May 22, 2023. This Explainer was adapted from “ Explained: Greenhouse Gases ” by David Chandler, which originally appeared in MIT News.

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Who discovered the greenhouse effect?

John Tyndall set the foundation for our modern understanding of the greenhouse effect, climate change, meteorology, and weather. But did he 'discover' it?

On 18 May 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall wrote in his journal ‘the subject is completely in my hands’. This is no cryptic note. Just nine days earlier he had set up his complex and clever new apparatus at the Royal Institution in London to try to detect the absorption of heat by gases. Now, he had done it. And as far as he knew, no-one had done it before him.

Tyndall soon established that carbon dioxide and water vapour were among the gases that absorbed heat, and also that they radiated heat, the physical basis of the greenhouse effect. In making these discoveries, Tyndall set the foundation for our modern understanding of the greenhouse effect, climate change, meteorology, and weather.

But, had he ‘discovered’ the greenhouse effect? And was he the first?

Well, yes and no. To both questions.

The ' greenhouse effect ' is responsible for the fact that our planet is warmer than it would be without an atmosphere. It makes the Earth habitable for life. Its operation is simple in principle. Heat, originally from the Sun, is radiated from the surface of the earth and absorbed by gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapour. Those in turn radiate heat themselves. That results in an increase in the average temperature of the surface and the atmosphere above what it would otherwise be.

What Tyndall had demonstrated unambiguously, and indeed for the first time, was the absorption and radiation by certain gases of what we now call long-wave infrared radiation . He had demonstrated the physical basis of the greenhouse effect. And he knew what he had shown. He wrote: "Thus the atmosphere admits of the entrance of solar heat; but checks its exit, and the result is a tendency to accumulate heat at the surface of the planet".

He also realised the implications for understanding climate, writing: "if, as the above experiments indicate, the chief influence be exercised by aqueous vapour, every variation of this constituent must produce a change of climate. Similar remarks would apply to the carbonic acid [carbon dioxide] diffused through the air". And he went on: "Such changes may in fact have produced all the mutations of climate which the researches of geologists reveal".

However, the actual existence of a greenhouse effect was already known.

In 1824, Joseph Fourier had written that "the temperature [of the Earth] can be augmented by the interposition of the atmosphere, because heat in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air, than in repassing into the air when converted into non-luminous heat". And in 1836, Claude Pouillet had written: "the atmospheric stratum…exercises a greater absorption upon the terrestrial than the solar rays".

Tyndall acknowledged the work of both of them. What he had done was to detect and explain the physical basis of the process, and identify gases responsible.

But was he even the first to do this?

In recent years it has become apparent that an American woman, Eunice Foote, made a similar discovery in 1856 , three years before Tyndall. Her experimental set-up is crude compared to Tyndall’s, and it is not easy to assess exactly what she measured or understood. Nevertheless, her experiments did provide evidence of the absorption of heat by carbon dioxide and moist air.

In addition, Foote had the insight to suggest, three years before Tyndall, that changing amounts of carbon dioxide and water vapour in the atmosphere could change the climate . As far as we know, she was the first person to do that. However, she did not differentiate between heat from the whole solar spectrum and what we now call long-wave infrared. It is the latter that is responsible for the greenhouse effect.

Foote did not give any clear explanation of the greenhouse effect. She may have unwittingly detected it, through her experiments in the 'shade', but as she made no comment on those results we can only surmise that she didn’t recognise what might be the cause of them. Tyndall, using long-wave infrared radiation, measured, understood and explained the greenhouse effect in terms of the absorption and radiation of heat by gases including carbon dioxide and water vapour in the atmosphere.

Retrospective claims of priority for Foote and Tyndall have become something of a cause celèbre . It has been claimed that Tyndall must have known of her work, and deliberately suppressed it, though there is no positive evidence that he did.

What is clear is that our understanding of the greenhouse effect, its mechanism, and its implications, rest on many shoulders. That history includes Fourier, Pouillet, Foote and Tyndall, in addition to Svante Arrhenius, who calculated in 1896 the temperature rise in the atmosphere that would be caused by a doubling of carbon dioxide levels, and Guy Callendar, who showed in 1938 that human activity was responsible for increasing carbon dioxide levels, and hence of potential climate change.

Now, thousands of scientists worldwide work on refining our knowledge, and publishing their collective findings and conclusions in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . We have come a long way since the 1850s, even if the practical challenge, of how to respond politically to the unambiguous message of human-induced climate change, remains huge.

This blog post was written by Roland Jackson , trustee of the Royal Institution and author of 'The Ascent of John Tyndall'.

This blog was first published in May 2019, but has been updated in November 2022.

More about Sir Roland Jackson

John Tyndall set the foundation for our modern understanding of the greenhouse effect, climate change, meteorology, and weather

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Part of the Climate Change exhibition.

Earth's atmosphere is composed of a mixture of gases: 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, >1% argon and trace amounts of other gases, including carbon dioxide. some gases absorb and re-radiate infrared energy that we sense as heat. these heat-absorbing gases are often referred to as greenhouse gases. human activities have been adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. how will earth's atmosphere respond to this increase in the amount of greenhouse gases? Scientists create physical models or experiments to compare how systems respond to changed conditions.

In this experiment students will observe two model atmospheres: one with normal atmospheric composition and another with an elevated concentration of carbon dioxide. These two contained atmospheres will be exposed to light energy in a sunny window or from a lamp.

Students will:

• understand that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb and hold heat  

Materials Per Group

• Student Worksheet
• 15 ml of Bromothymol Blue (BTB), an acid and carbon dioxide indicator
• 1 small beaker or jar
• 2 large jars with lids
• 2 pieces of black construction paper of equal size to place inside the jars
• 2 thermometers to place inside the jars
• 1 Erlenmeyer flask (250-500 ml)
• 1 one hole stopper for above flask
• 1 straight piece of glass tubing
• 1 50 cm piece of flexible tubing (aquarium air tubing works fine)
• 100 ml of vinegar
• 4 heaping teaspoons of baking soda
• Watches or classroom clock to time readings
• Lamp with 100 watt bulb or sunny window sill

Preparation (one day prior to class experiment)

Make a sufficient solution of BTB and water by filing a bottle 9/10ths full with tap water and adding BTB concentrate until the solution is a deep, transparent blue. While the exact concentration is not critical, the solution should be tested. Pour 15 ml BTB (1/2 oz) solution into a small clear cup. Using a straw, bubble one lungful of breath through the small cup of solution. A greenish color is good. If it stays blue or only slightly bluish green, it is too concentrated and can be remedied by pouring out some of the solution and adding more water. If it turns yellow, it is too dilute and more BTB should be added. Continue to test until correct. The solution may also be titrated using vinegar to establish the correct concentration. [NOTE: If using BTB in powdered form, prepare the concentrate by putting 1 gram of BTB powder into a 1 liter container. Add 16 ml of 0.1 molar sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and dissolve the BTB crystals. Then add 1 liter of water to make 1 liter of concentrate.] Each group of students will need about 15 ml (1/2 oz) of prepared BTB solution.

Prior Knowledge

• Explain to students that air is a mixture of many different gases, including some greenhouse gases that absorb infrared energy.
• Ask students if they know any greenhouse gases and their sources. (Answers may include: Water Vapor; naturally present from evaporation and transpiration. Carbon dioxide; burning fossil fuels, burning forests. Methane; rice agriculture, digestive systems of cattle, decaying organic matter. Nitrous oxide; agriculture through the use of nitrogen based fertilizers, livestock waste). Also ask: What human activities have been changing the concentration of these gases in our atmosphere? (Answers: see above.) Tell students that over the past 200 years, the concentration of these gases increased from approximately 278 ppm (parts per million) in 1800 to 385 ppm in 2008.)
• Distribute student worksheets and materials to each team.
• Gather student teams together and have them share their findings.

Student Worksheet Note When students place the flexible tubing into the BTB solution and observe the color of the liquid as the gas bubbles through the indicator solution, the color should change from blue to a yellow. This color change indicates the presence of carbonic acid, which forms when the carbon dioxide bubbles through the water.

Copyright © 2008 American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved.

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The Quantum Mechanics of the Greenhouse Effect

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine .

In 1896, the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius realized that carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere—the phenomenon now called the greenhouse effect. Since then, increasingly sophisticated modern climate models have verified Arrhenius’ central conclusion: that every time the CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere doubles, Earth’s temperature will rise between 2 and 5 degrees Celsius.

Still, the physical reason why CO 2 behaves this way has remained a mystery, until recently.

First, in 2022, physicists settled a dispute over the origin of the “logarithmic scaling” of the greenhouse effect. That refers to the way Earth’s temperature increases the same amount in response to any doubling of CO 2 , no matter the raw numbers.

Then, this spring, a team led by Robin Wordsworth of Harvard University figured out why the CO 2 molecule is so good at trapping heat in the first place. The researchers identified a strange quirk of the molecule’s quantum structure that explains why it’s such a powerful greenhouse gas—and why pumping more carbon into the sky drives climate change. The findings appeared in The Planetary Science Journal .

“It’s a really nice paper,” said Raymond Pierrehumbert , an atmospheric physicist at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the work. “It’s a good answer to all those people who say that global warming is just something that comes out of impenetrable computer models.”

To the contrary, global warming is tied to a numerical coincidence involving two different ways that CO 2 can wiggle.

“If it weren’t for this accident,” Pierrehumbert said, “then a lot of things would be different.”

An Old Conclusion

How could Arrhenius understand the basics of the greenhouse effect before quantum mechanics was even discovered? It started with Joseph Fourier, a French mathematician and physicist who realized exactly 200 years ago that Earth’s atmosphere insulates the planet from the freezing cold of space, a discovery that launched the field of climate science. Then, in 1856, an American, Eunice Foote, observed that carbon dioxide is particularly good at absorbing radiation. Next, the Irish physicist John Tyndall measured the amount of infrared light that CO 2 absorbs, showing the effect which Arrhenius then quantified using basic knowledge about Earth.

Robin Wordsworth, a climate scientist at Harvard University, turned to quantum mechanics to understand carbon dioxide’s absorption spectrum.

Earth radiates heat in the form of infrared light. The gist of the greenhouse effect is that some of that light, instead of escaping straight to space, hits CO 2 molecules in the atmosphere. A molecule absorbs the light, then reemits it. Then another does. Sometimes the light heads back down toward the surface. Sometimes it heads up to space, leaving the Earth one iota cooler, but only after traversing a jagged path to the cold upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Using a cruder version of the same mathematical approach climate scientists take today, Arrhenius concluded that adding more CO 2 would cause the planet’s surface to get warmer. It’s like adding insulation in your walls to keep your house warmer in the winter—heat from your furnace enters at the same rate, but it escapes more slowly.

A few years later, however, the Swedish physicist Knut Ångström published a rebuttal. He argued that CO 2 molecules only absorb a specific wavelength of infrared radiation—15 microns. And there was already enough of the gas in the atmosphere to trap 100 percent of the 15-micron light Earth emits, so adding more CO 2 would do nothing.

What Ångström missed was that CO 2 can absorb wavelengths slightly shorter or longer than 15 microns, though less readily. This light gets captured fewer times along its trip to space.

But that capture rate changes if the amount of carbon dioxide doubles. Now the light has twice the molecules to dodge before escaping, and it tends to get absorbed more times along the way. It escapes from a higher, colder layer of the atmosphere, so the outflow of heat slows to a trickle. It’s the heightened absorption of these near-15-micron wavelengths that’s responsible for our changing climate.

Despite the mistake, Ångström’s paper threw enough doubt on Arrhenius’s theory among his contemporaries that discussion of climate change more or less exited the mainstream for half a century. Even today, skeptics of the climate change consensus sometimes cite Ångström’s erroneous carbon “saturation” argument.

Back to Basics

In contrast to those early days, the modern era of climate science has moved forward largely by way of computational models that capture the many complex and chaotic facets of our messy, shifting atmosphere. For some, this makes the conclusions harder to understand.

“I’ve talked to a lot of skeptical physicists, and one of their objections is ‘You guys just run computer models, and then you take the answers from this black-box calculation, and you don’t understand it deeply,’” said Nadir Jeevanjee , an atmospheric physicist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “It’s a little unsatisfying not to be able to explain to someone on a chalkboard why we get the numbers we get.”

Jeevanjee and others like him have set out to build a simpler understanding of the impact of CO 2 concentration on the climate.

The Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was, in 1896, the first person to work out how sensitive Earth’s temperature is to changing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

A key question was the origin of the logarithmic scaling of the greenhouse effect—the 2-to-5-degree temperature rise that models predict will happen for every doubling of CO 2 . One theory held that the scaling comes from how quickly the temperature drops with altitude. But in 2022, a team of researchers used a simple model to prove that the logarithmic scaling comes from the shape of carbon dioxide’s absorption “spectrum”—how its ability to absorb light varies with the light’s wavelength.

This goes back to those wavelengths that are slightly longer or shorter than 15 microns. A critical detail is that carbon dioxide is worse—but not too much worse—at absorbing light with those wavelengths. The absorption falls off on either side of the peak at just the right rate to give rise to the logarithmic scaling.

“The shape of that spectrum is essential,” said David Romps , a climate physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who coauthored the 2022 paper. “If you change it, you don’t get the logarithmic scaling.”

The carbon spectrum’s shape is unusual—most gases absorb a much narrower range of wavelengths. “The question I had at the back of my mind was: Why does it have this shape?” Romps said. “But I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

Consequential Wiggles

Wordsworth and his coauthors Jacob Seeley and Keith Shine turned to quantum mechanics to find the answer.

Light is made of packets of energy called photons. Molecules like CO 2 can absorb them only when the packets have exactly the right amount of energy to bump the molecule up to a different quantum mechanical state.

Carbon dioxide usually sits in its “ground state,” where its three atoms form a line with the carbon atom in the center, equidistant from the others. The molecule has “excited” states as well, in which its atoms undulate or swing about.

A photon of 15-micron light contains the exact energy required to set the carbon atom swirling about the center point in a sort of hula-hoop motion. Climate scientists have long blamed this hula-hoop state for the greenhouse effect, but—as Ångström anticipated—the effect requires too precise an amount of energy, Wordsworth and his team found. The hula-hoop state can’t explain the relatively slow decline in the absorption rate for photons further from 15 microns, so it can’t explain climate change by itself.

The key, they found, is another type of motion, where the two oxygen atoms repeatedly bob toward and away from the carbon center, as if stretching and compressing a spring connecting them. This motion takes too much energy to be induced by Earth’s infrared photons on their own.

But the authors found that the energy of the stretching motion is so close to double that of the hula-hoop motion that the two states of motion mix with one another. Special combinations of the two motions exist, requiring slightly more or less than the exact energy of the hula-hoop motion.

This unique phenomenon is called Fermi resonance after the famous physicist Enrico Fermi, who derived it in a 1931 paper. But its connection to Earth’s climate was only made for the first time in a paper last year by Shine and his student, and the paper this spring is the first to fully lay it bare.

“The moment when we wrote down the terms of this equation and saw that it all clicked together, it felt pretty incredible,” Wordsworth said. “It’s a result that finally shows us how directly the quantum mechanics links to the bigger picture.”

In some ways, he said, the calculation helps us understand climate change better than any computer model. “It just seems to be a fundamentally important thing to be able to say in a field that we can show from basic principles where everything comes from.”

Joanna Haigh , an atmospheric physicist and emeritus professor at Imperial College London, agreed, saying the paper adds rhetorical power to the case for climate change by showing that it is “based on fundamental quantum mechanical concepts and established physics.”

This January, the NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory reported that the concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere has risen from its preindustrial level of 280 parts per million to a record high 419.3 parts per million as of 2023, triggering an estimated 1 degree Celsius of warming so far.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine , an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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Jet propulsion laboratory, more about carbon mapper, news media contacts.

Developed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the imaging spectrometer will provide actionable data to help reduce emissions that contribute to global warming.

Tanager-1, the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s first satellite, which carries a state-of-the-art, NASA-designed greenhouse-gas-tracking instrument, is in Earth orbit after lifting off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:56 a.m. PDT Friday, Aug. 16. Ground controllers successfully established communications with Tanager-1 at 2:45 p.m. PDT the same day.

The satellite will use imaging spectrometer technology developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to measure methane and carbon dioxide point-source emissions, down to the level of individual facilities and equipment, on a global scale. Tanager-1 was developed as part of a philanthropically funded public-private coalition led by the nonprofit Carbon Mapper. Planet Labs PBC, which built Tanager-1, and JPL are both members of the Carbon Mapper Coalition and plan to launch a second Tanager satellite equipped with a JPL-built imaging spectrometer at a later date.

“The imaging spectrometer technology aboard Tanager-1 is the product of four decades of development at NASA JPL and truly in a class of its own,” said JPL Director Laurie Leshin. “The data that this public-private partnership provides on sources of greenhouse gas emissions will be precise and global, making it beneficial to everyone.”

Once in operation, the spacecraft will scan about 50,000 square miles (130,000 square kilometers) of Earth’s surface per day. Carbon Mapper scientists will analyze data from Tanager-1 to identify gas plumes with the unique spectral signatures of methane and carbon dioxide — and pinpoint their sources. Plume data will be publicly available online at the Carbon Mapper data portal .

Methane and carbon dioxide are the greenhouse gases that contribute most to climate change. About half of methane emissions worldwide result from human activities — primarily from the fossil fuel, agriculture, and waste management industries. Meanwhile, there is now 50% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there was in 1750, an increase largely due to the extraction and burning of coal, oil, and gas.

“The Carbon Mapper Coalition is a prime example of how organizations from different sectors are uniting around a common goal of addressing climate change,” said Riley Duren, Carbon Mapper CEO. “By detecting, pinpointing, and quantifying super-emitters and making this data accessible to decision-makers, we can drive significant action around the world to cut emissions now.”

The imaging spectrometer aboard the satellite measures hundreds of wavelengths of light that are reflected by Earth’s surface. Different compounds in the planet’s atmosphere — including methane and carbon dioxide — absorb different wavelengths of light, leaving spectral “fingerprints” that the imaging spectrometer can identify. These infrared fingerprints can enable researchers to pinpoint and quantify strong greenhouse gas emissions, potentially accelerating mitigation efforts.

Tanager-1 is part of a broader effort to make methane and carbon dioxide data accessible and actionable. That effort includes using measurements provided by NASA’s EMIT (Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation), an imaging spectrometer developed by JPL and installed on the International Space Station.

Carbon Mapper is a nonprofit organization focused on facilitating timely action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Its mission is to fill gaps in the emerging global ecosystem of methane and carbon dioxide monitoring systems by delivering data at facility scale that is precise, timely, and accessible to empower science-based decision making and action. The organization is leading the development of the Carbon Mapper constellation of satellites supported by a public-private partnership composed of Planet Labs PBC, JPL, the California Air Resources Board, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and RMI, with funding from High Tide Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and other philanthropic donors.

Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307 [email protected] / [email protected]

Kelly Vaughn Carbon Mapper, Pasadena, Calif. 970-401-0001 [email protected]

Related Terms

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