Without carbon dioxide the Earth would freeze

Superfact 91: Without greenhouse gases, the Earth’s average surface temperature would drop from the current 15 Celsius (59 Fahrenheit) to approximately -18 Celsius (0 Fahrenheit), which is an average temperature drop of 33 degrees Celsius. If you removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but let the other greenhouse gases stay the drop would be 30 degrees Celsius. In both cases most of the planet would freeze. This is referred to as snowball Earth.

Snowball Earth or Snowball planet. In the picture Earth is seen from space. It is covered by ice all over.
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Our planet is much warmer than it otherwise would be because of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is the most important of the greenhouse gases. We are rapidly warming the atmosphere with our carbon dioxide emissions as explained by these articles from NASA and NOAA.  If we did the opposite and removed CO2 from the atmosphere we would be cooling the atmosphere. As mentioned, if we removed all greenhouse gases from the atmosphere the planet’s average temperature would drop by 33 degrees Celsius and this NASA article claims it would take 50 years to reach that temperature.

If we removed only carbon dioxide and let all the other greenhouse gases remain, we would get an almost as big temperature drop of 30 degrees Celsius according to the calculations done by this article. Some of you may know that water vapor provides a larger portion of the warming than CO2. In fact, 75% of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor and clouds. This seems contradictory. However, when the atmosphere cools, the water vapor will rain out of the atmosphere unlike CO2. Basically, water vapor will adjust to the temperature whilst CO2 is  forcing the temperature. It is crucial to understand this difference. That is why CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas. In summary, we need just the right amount of CO2 for a healthy climate.

I consider this a super fact because it is true, it is an important fact, and I believe it is a surprising fact to many, especially those who doubt carbon dioxide’s importance to the global warming we are experiencing. I called it global warming but whether you call it global warming, climate change, or climate disruption, we are talking about the same thing.

Snowball Earth

Mountains covered by ice and snow and valleys covered by a thick ice sheet.
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Scientists believe there have been at least two major “Snowball Earth” events between 720 and 635 million years ago where ice and snow covered nearly the entire planet. These snowball earth events were triggered by natural events, likely a plunge in sunlight, followed by a plunge in carbon dioxide not entering the atmosphere, and amplified by sunlight reflecting back into space. All three effects made Earth cooler. The recent ice ages were likely caused primarily by earth’s orbital cycles. Climate changed in the past due to natural phenomena, but that does not mean that the current very rapid warming (rapid geologically speaking) is natural.

If you want to understand why we can be so sure that it is our CO2 emissions that is causing the current global warming, not the sun, not volcanoes, not orbital cycles, and not another natural process, please check out the list of evidence in the second part of this post “Global Warming is Happening and is Caused by us”.

Hothouse Venus

What we see in the photo is a large white smooth planet. The MESSENGER spacecraft snapped a series of images as it approached Venus on June 5, 2007. The planet is enshrouded by a global layer of clouds that obscures its surface to the MESSENGER Dual Imaging System (MDIS) cameras. This single frame is part of a color sequence taken that helped the MESSENGER team calibrate the camera in preparation for the spacecraft's first flyby of Mercury on January 14, 2008.
Image taken by the NASA MESSENGER as it approached Venus on June 5, 2007. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The image is taken from this Wikipedia article.

The opposite of snowball Earth is hot Venus. Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system due to an extreme runaway greenhouse effect. Surface temperatures are averaging around 465 degrees Celsius (870 degrees Fahrenheit). The thick atmosphere of Venus is composed primarily of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid. This causes a greenhouse effect that traps heat.

Despite the fact that Mercury is much closer to the sun (58 million kilometers versus 108 million kilometers) and receives nearly four times as much sunlight per unit area than Venus, Mercury is on average much cooler. The reason is that Mercury’s atmosphere is thin and without a greenhouse effect.

The YouTube video below from NASA explains the greenhouse effect on Venus. It is just one minute long.

I would also like you to take a look at this post:, “The Greenhouse Effect: From Early Chemistry to the Keeling Curve” by Craigavad miscellany a science blog written by a retired academic. It is a very educational and interesting post related to this topic.

To see the Other Super Facts click here

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

30 thoughts on “Without carbon dioxide the Earth would freeze”

  3. That’s interesting and crazy how much greenhouse gasses warm the earth. And it would be much cooler if we weren’t driving cars for the last 100 or so years. I hope we can slow the major warming events, but I think we acted too late, and certain places won’t be habitable after 2050. Although with A/C people could probably live there, you just couldn’t go outside after 9 AM. :O

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    1. Thank you so much Sara. You are right some places may not be habitable after 2050. The good news is that the world is moving towards clean energy and pretty much all developed countries have succeeded in lowering their CO2 emissions. We are slowly moving in the right direction but there will still be problems.

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            1. I wish you a good trip. However, be careful if you go in summer. I have a friend who did hiking in the Grand Canyon without bringing sufficient water or ways to cool down and he got heat stroke. He survived but suffered from it the entire rest of his life.

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