What are greenhouse gases?
Well, they are chemicals which cause what is called the greenhouse effect. This means they let radiation into the atmosphere which warms up the planets surface. They largely refer to carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, and chlorofluorocarbons.
Think of it like this, you have a plant that needs a certain temperature to grow properly so you put in it a glass box. This glass acts as an insulation which allows the Sun’s electromagnetic radiation (infrared rays) through but not the outside temperature, so the glass box will get warm even if it’s cold outside (in theory). Now imagine if you put the wrong kind of glass, then too much radiation can come through causing the box to get too hot and the plant will die.
It works in a similar way to the chemicals in the atmosphere. Too many greenhouses gases (the wrong type of glass) will let too much radiation to the Earth’s surface (our plant) which causes it to heat up and create unlivable circumstances (it will die).
How do plants help reduce greenhouse gases?
Well, in simple terms, when they photosynthesize they take carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen, or water (H2O), and stick them together using light energy to make sugars and oxygen. The plants then store the sugars and release the oxygen (6CO2 + 6H2 C6H12O6(sugar) + 6O2).
This can cause a problem when plants, especially trees, burn. According to Sciencing.com, burning wood creates about 1.9 kg of carbon dioxide for every 1 kg of wood. This means that when a forest burns, it creates significantly more carbon dioxide than it would have produced.
Think of this. If you have a pine tree that weighs just over 900 kg, then it will produce around 1,700 kg of carbon dioxide when it burns. On average, that same tree will produce around 100 kg of oxygen in one year. This means it could take 17 trees to make up for one tree burning.
So if say 10,000 trees of that size have burned since January in the Amazon, that roughly 17 million kilograms of carbon dioxide that could be released into the atmosphere.
NASA on greenhouse gases
How plants use photosynthesis
How much oxygen can trees produce
