"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." This statement emphasizes the crucial relationship between the absorption spectrum of CO2 and the logarithmic nature of the greenhouse effect, indicating any alteration in this unique spectrum could disrupt predicted temperature rises linked to CO2 levels.
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 CO2 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. This connection highlights how quantum mechanics fundamentally impacts our understanding of greenhouse gases and their temperature effects.
#greenhouse-effect #co2-absorption-spectrum #climate-change #quantum-mechanics #temperature-predictions
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