The greenhouse effect is the heating of the surface of a planet or moon due to the presence of an atmosphere containing gases that absorb and emit infrared radiation.

Greenhouse gases, which include water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane, are almost transparent to solar radiation but strongly absorb and emit infrared radiation. Thus, greenhouse gases trap heat within the surface-troposphere system.

Thus, greenhouse gases trap heat within the surface-troposphere system. This mechanism is fundamentally different from that of an actual greenhouse, which works by isolating warm air inside the structure so that heat is not lost by convection.

The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824, first reliably experimented on by John Tyndall in 1858, and first reported quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.

Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gases are:

– Water vapor
– Carbon dioxide
– Methane
– Nitrous oxide
– Ozone
– CFCs

When these gases are ranked by their contribution to the greenhouse effect, the most important are:

- Water vapor, which contributes 36–70%
- Carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26%
- Methane, which contributes 4–9%
- Ozone, which contributes 3–7%

The major non-gas contributor to the Earth’s greenhouse effect, clouds, also absorb and emit infrared radiation and thus have an effect on radiative properties of the greenhouse gases.