Novel Discoveries in Atmospheric Physics

Climate change is currently an eminent theme in politics. Thereby, so-called greenhouse gases such
as CO2 are considered as the real cause for the temperature rise of the global atmosphere. This
theory traces back to measurements of Tyndall at the end of the 19th century which revealed that CO2
absorbs thermal radiation, in contrast to N2 and O2, the main components of the air, which do not absorb.
Subsequently, Arrhenius tried to theoretically implement the Stefan-Boltzmann law, which meanwhile
became known, assuming that the atmosphere is warmed up by the black-body radiation of the
Earth surface, but solely due to the CO2 and to similar IR (infrared) absorbing greenhouse gases such
as CH4. This means: The atmosphere would not be warmed up if no CO2 or other greenhouse gases
were there. Thus the temperature of the atmosphere would be identical with the temperature of the
absolute zero. After the Second World War, this approach was continued by Plass and others, based
on IR- spectroscopic, and regarding an extra-terrestrial albedo or solar reflection coefficient.