The WMO data, meanwhile, confirms that atmospheric concentrations of the three gases principally responsible for the man-made component of the greenhouse effect - carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide - all rose during 2009.

BBC: Modest hopes for climate summit, as gas levels rise

Since both of these chemicals are more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide, this effect, too, should help combat global warming.

ECONOMIST: Biochar could enrich soils and cut greenhouse gases as well

Most of it is, of course, radiated back into space. (It is the partial blocking of this radiation by gases such as carbon dioxide that causes the much-talked-of greenhouse effect.) Some of it, however, goes in the opposite direction, into the ground.

ECONOMIST: The hole story of global warming