Greenhouse effect: The relative contributions of emission height and total absorption

Since the 1970s, results from radiative transfer models unambiguously show that an increase in the carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration leads to an increase of the greenhouse effect. However, this robust result is often misunderstood and often questioned. A common argument is that the CO₂ greenhouse effect is saturated (i.e., does not increase) as CO₂ absorption of an entire atmospheric column, named absorptivity, is saturated. This argument is erroneous first because absorptivity by CO₂ is currently not fully saturated and still increases with CO₂ concentration and second because a change in emission height explains why the greenhouse effect may increase even if the absorptivity is saturated. However, these explanations are only qualitative. In this article, we first propose a way of quantifying the effects of both the emission height and absorptivity and we illustrate which one of the two dominates for a suite of simple idealized atmospheres. Then, using a line-by-line model and a representative standard atmospheric profile, we show that the increase of the greenhouse effect resulting from an increase of CO₂ from its current value is primarily due (about 90%) to the change in emission height. For an increase of water vapor, the change in absorptivity plays a more important role (about 40%) but the change in emission height still has the largest contribution (about 60%).