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 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 ...

Eunice Newton Foote, who discovered the greenhouse effect and was a pivotal figure in women’s rights movements, is the focus of today’s Google doodle. The discovery of the greenhouse effect is often ...