AN INDUSTRIAL chemical being used in ever larger quantities to make flat-screen TVs may be making global warming worse. However, because it's not covered by the Kyoto protocol, nobody knows by how much. The gas was first introduced as a measure to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but a prominent atmospheric chemist this week warned it could now be having the opposite effect.

Looking down from space, the night sky in the Gulf of Guinea offshore Nigeria is lit up by the flares that burn natural gas from oil fields. This gas is burned without a use and contributes greenhouse gases to the global warming problem. This gas is not only an untapped  resource, but also a potential gold mine for producing carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol.

Airports, which represent localized sources of jet aircraft emissions, particularly particles, are growing worldwide, and so are emissions associated with ground-level operations (taking off and landing).

Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) can be called the missing greenhouse gas: It is a synthetic chemical produced in industrial quantities; it is not included in the Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases or in national reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); and there are no observations documenting its atmospheric abundance.

Increasing tropospheric ozone levels over the past 150 years have led to a significant climate perturbation; the prediction of future trends in tropospheric ozone will require a full understanding of both its precursor emissions and its destruction processes. A large proportion of tropospheric ozone loss occurs in the tropical marine boundary layer and is thought to be driven primarily by high ozone photolysis rates in the presence of high concentrations of water vapour.

Halogens are known to decrease the levels of stratospheric ozone. The latest measurements show that something similar occurs in the lower atmosphere over tropical oceans