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Glossary of Greenhouse Gas Terms

Greenbuilding Law

Albedo The amount of solar radiation reflected from an object or surface, often expressed as a percentage. Atmosphere The gaseous envelope surrounding the Earth. The dry atmosphere consists almost entirely of nitrogen (78.1% The dry atmosphere consists almost entirely of nitrogen (78.1%

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Back in Black: Creating positive changes by focusing on a short-lived pollutant

HumanNature

When fuels are burned to create energy in a process called combustion, black carbon along with carbon monoxide and other compounds are created because there is not enough oxygen in the atmosphere for the reaction to go to completion. Whenever there are combustion processes, of which there are many in our industrial society (e.g.,

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Scanning the cosmos for signs of alien technology

Physics World

While neither idea was ever implemented, both were examples of a “technosignature” or a “technomarker” – a tell-tale indication of past or present technological activity, pointing out the existence of an advanced planetary civilization. Analogous to technosignatures, these are the signs of life on alien worlds, intelligent or otherwise.

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Environmental Law: Government and Public Policy Towards the Environment

Environmental Science

Air emissions : Any gas emitted into the atmosphere from industrial or commercial activity. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) : A group of inert chemical used in many industrial and everyday processes such as our refrigerators that are not broken down at lower atmospheric levels and rise to the upper levels, destroying ozone.

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Seeing the Earth through alien eyes: an extraterrestrial view of our planet

Physics World

“If I look at the next 50 years, next hundred years maybe, nobody will be able to set up a telescope that’s powerful enough to resolve surface features,” says Jonathan Jiang , an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses Earth as a laboratory to model exoplanets. New eyes on alien worlds.

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Climatology: The Science of Global Weather Systems over the Long Term

Environmental Science

Satellites, for example, are used in meteorology to track weather systems and to monitor atmospheric fronts to predict what the weather will do next. Known as ENSO, they are opposite effects of the same process and are defined as an oscillation (a variation in magnitude) between the temperature of the atmosphere and the ocean.

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Celebrating Ozone Layer Protection Milestones of the Clean Air Act

EPA

Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation. Ozone layer protection in the United States reaches an important milestone in 2020. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been helping to protect and heal the Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer by phasing out ozone-depleting substances (ODS).