Table of Contents
What influences the amount of light and warmth a planet receives?
On global scales, three things can affect this energy flow and therefore, the average global surface temperature. As shown in the figure below, they are the planet’s distance from the Sun, the planet’s surface reflectivity (albedo), and the planet’s atmosphere (through a process called the greenhouse effect).
What gives the earth light and warmth?
The Sun’s energy drives the climate system The sun warms the planet, drives the hydrologic cycle, and makes life on Earth possible.
What does the amount of sunlight depend on?
The amount of sunlight reflected depends on the sun’s angle, wavelength, and weather conditions. Of the light that reaches the water’s surface, approximately 5-10% is reflected 1. Longer wavelengths are reflected slightly more than shorter wavelengths 10.
What determines the amount of sunlight and temperatures in the world?
As the Earth orbits the Sun, the tilt causes one hemisphere and then the other to receive more direct sunlight and to have longer days. The total energy received each day at the top of the atmosphere depends on latitude.
Which factors helps to warm the planet by day and makes it cool at night?
The Earth converts solar radiation in the visible spectrum to infrared radiation, which it emits; greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation and warm the atmosphere. Aerosols usually act to cool the Earth on relatively short timescales.
How does the Earth receives its light?
Most of the energy that reaches the Earth’s surface comes from the Sun. About 44 percent of solar radiation is in the visible light wavelengths, but the Sun also emits infrared, ultraviolet, and other wavelengths. When viewed together, all of the wavelengths of visible light appear white.
How much energy does the Earth produce?
A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That’s more than 10,000 times the world’s total energy use. And that energy is completely renewable — at least, for the lifetime of the sun. “It’s finite, but we’re talking billions of years,” Taylor says.
Which part of Earth receives less light?
poles
Earth receives different amounts of solar energy at different latitudes, with the most at the equator and the least at the poles.
What is the most important factor that determines the Earth’s temperature?
The Sun
The Sun is the primary source of energy that influences any planet’s temperature, including Earth. The amount of energy received from the Sun is called insolation; the ratio reflected is called the albedo.
What determines temperature on Earth?
If you go to the top of the earth’s atmosphere (Figure 1), about 100 km above the surface, and measure the amount of incoming radiation and subtract from that the amount of outgoing radiation, what is left, the net radiative flux, is what determines earth’s temperature.