Climate and carbon

Fourier based his calculation on the anticipated heat loss from a black body in a vacuum and the heat gain arising from the sun's radiation, using a relatively simple equation based on Newton's Law of Cooling. Following Fourier's work in the 1820s, an ever-growing number of scientists has explored and explained the connection between the composition of the atmosphere and global temperature. Carbon monoxide in due course forms carbon dioxide, and the NO_x gases influence the generation of the hydroxyl radical OH that assists in the production of methane. CO₂ is part of all our lives: humans breathe it out as burning energy from food, converting carbon (C) from carbohydrates and atmospheric oxygen into this invisible and apparently benign gas. The concept of radiative forcing (RF) is recent it was only developed for the First Assessment Report of the IPCC, published in 1990 but, since that time, it has become the standard measure for explaining climate change impacts.