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Greenhouse gas methane cools our planet even as it heats: Study

Greenhouse gas methane cools our planet even as it heats: Study
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New Delhi, Mar 27 (PTI) Methane — a potent greenhouse gas — traps a great deal of heat in Earth’s atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30 per cent of the heat, a “surprising” new study has found.

Greenhouse gases like methane create a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface, called longwave energy, and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet hotter.

The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found that in addition to absorbing longwave energy, methane also absorbs incoming energy from the Sun, known as shortwave energy.

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