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Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (/ ˈ f ʊr i eɪ,-i ər /; [1] French: [ʒɑ̃ batist ʒozɛf fuʁje]; 21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series, which eventually developed into Fourier analysis and harmonic analysis, and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations.
In 1938 Guy Stewart Callendar attempted to revive Arrhenius's greenhouse-effect theory. Callendar presented evidence that both temperature and the CO 2 level in the atmosphere had been rising over the past half-century, and he argued that newer spectroscopic measurements showed that the gas was effective in absorbing infrared in the atmosphere.
The greenhouse effect occurs when greenhouse gases in a planet's atmosphere insulate the planet from losing heat to space, raising its surface temperature. Surface heating can happen from an internal heat source (as in the case of Jupiter ) or come from an external source, such as its host star .
[7] [1] Pouillet developed and corrected Joseph Fourier's work on the surface temperature of the earth, developing the first real mathematical treatment of the greenhouse effect. He speculated that water vapour and carbon dioxide might trap infrared radiation in the atmosphere, warming the earth enough to support plant and animal life. [8]
Earth constantly absorbs energy from sunlight and emits thermal radiation as infrared light. In the long run, Earth radiates the same amount of energy per second as it absorbs, because the amount of thermal radiation emitted depends upon temperature: If Earth absorbs more energy per second than it radiates, Earth heats up and the thermal radiation will increase, until balance is restored; if ...
In developing a theory to explain the ice ages, Arrhenius, in 1896, was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) will increase Earth's surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.
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The nature of this experiment and Fourier's conclusion that gases in the atmosphere could not form a stable barrier like the glass panes may have contributed to atmospheric warming later being known as the 'greenhouse' effect despite the actual mechanism of atmospheric warming being different than that found in an actual greenhouse.