Is the additional greenhouse effect already evident in the current climate?

Abstract

Several greenhouse gases, which are in part or entirely produced by human activities, have accumulated in the atmosphere since approximately the middle of the 19th century. They are assumed to have an additional greenhouse effect causing a further increase of atmospheric temperatures near the ground and a decrease in the layers above approximately 15 km altitude. The currently observed near-surface warming over nearly the entire globe is already considered by a large fraction of our society to be result of this additional greenhouse effect. Complete justification of this assumption is, however, not yet possible, because there are still too many unknowns in our knowledge of participating processes and in our modeling capabilities.