Greenhouse gases, global warming, and climate change: Review of controlling factors, causes, and mitigation measures

Abstract In this work, the controlling factors, causes, and mitigation measures for some greenhouse gases (GHGs) which are water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) have been reviewed. The study additionally uses the multi‐objective optimization (MOO) modeling approach to express GHG impact in terms of performance indices (PI) and establish existing experimental results which attribute the highest non‐condensing GHG intensity to CO 2 . The analyses show that the global warming intensity of the GHGs is majorly a function of atmospheric concentration (C), characterization factor (CF), and residence time (RT), at least two of which must be relatively significant for high impact intensity. As a result, despite the high characterization factor of CH 4 and N 2 O, the gases relative to CO 2 respectively have low overall global warming impact of 3.25% and 44.34% due to their low concentration and residence time. In contrast, CO 2 , despite its low characterization factor, has higher global warming impact of 52.42% due to its high concentration and residence time. The result further shows that the maximum obtainable impact of CH 4 relative to CO 2 and N 2 O is 3.95%, while that of N 2 O is 69.47%, considering only the three GHG properties. Even though water vapor, a condensing GHG, also has low residence time, it easily returns to the atmosphere due to its repeated evaporation and condensation. Consequently, the overall impact gets multiplied, thereby making it the most dominant GHG. Furthermore, to mitigate these GHGs, the use of sustainable techniques such as green energy, energy efficiency, and sequestration is highly necessary.