How does the greenhouse effect work? On which planet is it the strongest?
It’s certainly strongest on Venus. Without a strong greenhouse effect, Venus would be frozen – just like the Earth would be. The way it works is that light penetrates down to the ground (even at Venus), warms the ground, and is reradiated in longer infrared wavelengths. Water vapor (on Earth) and carbon dioxide (Earth and Venus) reflect infrared light, mostly sending it back down. It can get reabsorbed, and reemitted at infrared again. Eventually the atmosphere heats, and radiates heat out from the top. But the atmosphere’s temperature has to get much higher for that to happen. As a result, the temperature for everything is much higher. So instead of being cold enough to freeze water, Venus is hot enough to melt lead. One might suggest that Saturn’s moon Titan has a very strong greenhouse effect. It has a heavy hydrocarbon atmosphere, which is also a very strong greenhouse gas. But only about one percent of the light that strikes Earth gets to Titan. So it’s still quite cold. It’s cert
