Think of a greenhouse. It’s a structure with glass walls that lets light in and traps heat, all for the benefit of the plants inside. As for how it works, that’s elementary! It’s all down to the ...

The Trump administration walked back an Obama-era environmental decision that has been the legal basis for establishing federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. The Environmental Protection ...

Research over nearly a decade has tracked an unusual case of methane and carbon dioxide levels that seems to be actually cooling portions of Antarctica. Dubbed a negative greenhouse effect, this ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1896, the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius realized that carbon dioxide (CO 2) traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere—the phenomenon now ...