particularly water, but also CO2 and some other less common molecules, intercept the heat that's radiated from the ground and slow its progress out to space and therefore make the planet warmer than it would be. Just like the insulation provided by a jacket or a blanket which impedes the flow of your body heat and hence keeps you warm. And what humans are doing is adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere that are increasing the effectiveness of this insulation and so slowing the progress of heat back out into space and therefore warming the surface of the planet. We should realize that the warming is not uniform over the globe. It's warming much more rapidly in the polar regions, in particularly the North Pole or the Arctic. It's also warming more rapidly on the land than it is over the oceans. And as we mentioned, the average warming has not been steady at all but has gone up and gone down a bit over the last century, century and a half. So what accounts for the more (28/57)
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