Global warming potential
estimate of how an atmospheric gas affects global climate change
Global warming potential (GWP) is a measure of how much heat a greenhouse gas (GHG) traps in the atmosphere over a specific time period, relative to carbon dioxide (CO2). It is a dimensionless quantity expressed as a multiple of warming caused by the same mass of CO2. Therefore, by definition CO2 has a GWP of 1. For other gases, it depends on how strongly the gas absorbs thermal radiation, how quickly it leaves the atmosphere, and the time frame considered.
For example, methane (CH4) has a GWP over 20 years (GWP-20) of 81.2 meaning that, a leak of a tonne of methane is equivalent to emitting 81.2 tonnes of CO2, both measured over 20 years. As methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO2, its GWP is much less over longer time periods, with a GWP-100 of 27.9 and a GWP-500 of 7.95.
Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions) can be expressed in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent mass or just carbon dioxide equivalent (symbolized CO2e or CO2eq, also denoted CO2-e or CO2-eq) can be calculated from the GWP and emitted mass. For any gas, it is the mass of CO2 that would warm the earth as much as the mass of that gas. Thus it provides a common scale for measuring the climate effects of different gases. It is calculated as GWP times mass of the other gas; it is typically expressed in gigatonnes (symbol Gt).
The public source identifies “Global warming potential” as estimate of how an atmospheric gas affects global climate change. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Global, warming and potential.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q901028. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Global warming potential” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.