What would happen to air temperatures in the troposphere if carbon dioxide were removed from air?
1 Answer
Depends on what it was replaced with.
Explanation:
Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas, in that it is the most abundant. Greenhouse gases work like a blanket to trap heat from the Earth.
https://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/an-exercise-in-how-climate-denial-works/
The above chart shows what energy carbon dioxide absorbs. The bottom axis is the wavelength of the energy with the common names for energy at those wavelengths. You can see that there is no absorption of visible light or shorter wavelengths, and even slightly longer wavelengths. These wavelengths represent sunlight. The longer near infrared and infrared wavelengths represent heat. Carbon dioxide absorbs this heat and warms the atmosphere.
If the carbon dioxide was replaced by nitrogen or oxygen (two most common gases in the atmosphere), then there would be almost no absorption of this heat, meaning at night when there is no incoming solar radiation, the temperatures would drop much more dramatically, possibly to the point of too cold to support life.
If it was replaced by another greenhouse gas then it depends on what the gas was. Other greenhouse gases, like methane, are much better at absorbing heat than carbon dioxide. In this case we would be warmer.
None of this addresses what would happen to plant-life that requires carbon dioxide to survive. Generally speaking, we need carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we just don't need too much of it.
