Global warming: review on driving forces and mitigation

Global warming is one of the major consequences of the human activities where the overuse of fossil fuels as energy resources caused the increase in the concentration of the greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O, and water vapor, in the atmosphere causing the increase in the average surface temperature of the earth. This article reviews the driving forces of global warming and highlights the major contributors to this phenomenon and presents some of the mitigation techniques. Water vapor is responsible for two‐third of the global warming; however, CO 2 is considered as the controlling factor of the global warming. In other words, if the concentration of CO 2 did not increase, global warming would not have happened. Scientists claim that doubling or halving the CO 2 in the atmosphere causes the change in the average surface temperature of the earth by +3.8 °C or −3.6 °C, respectively. However, this amount of change depends on the change in the humidity of the air which in return depends on the air's temperature. Conversely, even though the other GHGs such as CH 4 and N 2 O have stronger ability to absorb the radiation, their contribution in the global warming is insignificant because of their low concentration in the atmosphere compared with CO 2 . The adoption of the mitigation and adaptation strategies at the same time is the most effective economic and technical solution for the global warming issue. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38: 13–21, 2019