This created a greenhouse effect, trapping heat and moisture.
By trapping heat, greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
There it persists for a long time, trapping heat as a greenhouse gas.
If the Siberian tundra melts, methane will rise from the earth, trapping heat in the atmosphere.
This phenomenon makes the planet habitable, by trapping heat that would otherwise be lost into space.
That's because methane is 86 times more potent for trapping heat in the short-term than carbon dioxide.
Gas extraction can cause leaks of methane, which is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat.
But there is another approach that relies on trapping heat and is generated by the human body.
Each methane molecule is about 70 times more potent in terms of trapping heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide.
Once carbon has been emitted into the atmosphere, it sticks around for hundreds of years, some of it even longer, trapping heat.
Molecule for molecule, it is 18,000 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the most familiar greenhouse gas, Dr. Sturges said.
