Greenhouse effect
The warming of the lower atmosphere due to the net absorption of infrared (long-wave) terrestrial radiation by its components, both gases and aerosols. While there is a natural greenhouse effect on Earth - something that can be extended to the atmospheres of other planets -, in the context of current climate change, the expression refers to the extra warming due to the increase experienced by the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - with CO2 leading the way -, as a consequence of the massive combustion of fossil fuels and biomass by human beings. The radiative forcing induced by this has caused an increase in the average global temperature at the Earth's surface, which has not yet peaked. The French mathematician and physicist Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) was the first scientist to consider - in 1824 - that the Earth retained heat in a manner similar to a greenhouse. That analogy is not entirely accurate, since the glass of a greenhouse is transparent to solar radiation (short-wave) but opaque to the infrared radiation (short-wave, long-wave) generated inside it - which causes the temperature rise -, while in the case of the atmosphere, only part of terrestrial radiation (infrared, long-wave) is retained by greenhouse gases, with the rest escaping into outer space.
Related terms: climate change, carbon dioxide (CO2), greenhouse gases