Greenhouse Effect

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 Greenhouse Effect
On a bright, cool day, most people notice the sun’s rays as feeling good on
their skin. By nature, many of us even try to stay on the sunny side of the street
while walking. The sun is 93 million miles away from earth and its energy travels
to us in moving waves called radiation. The energy becomes heat, light and other
energy too.
Visible sunlight allows us to see the world around us, but there is invisible
sunlight, too. These rays can’t be seen, but some can be felt as heat. They are
called ultraviolet rays, and they are what changes the appearance of the skin, like
wrinkles and even cancer.
I discovered a blanket of gases known as the atmosphere surrounding our
planet. It is what provides us with the air we breathe, and it protects us from the
full blast of the sun’s radiation. Way up there in the part of the atmosphere called
the stratosphere, a layer of gas called ozone, filters out most of the sun’s damaging
ultraviolet rays. This happens about five miles to 25 miles above the surface of
Earth (Bright 14-15).
Only about one- millionth of our atmosphere is made up of ozone. But it
has an important job. Ozone can absorb the part of the sunlight called ultraviolet


radiation. Some ultraviolet radiation still gets through, but not enough to do
serious damage to Earth. Because if it got through, life as we know it would be
impossible.
But there is a serious problem in the ozone layer. Each year, a large hole
appears in it. It isn’t an actual hole, like a hole in a pocket, but a layer getting
thinner as it shows up on the satellite pictures. The “hole” is right over Antarctica,
covering an area about the size of the United Stat...