Why is the Earth not the same temperature everywhere?
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Why is the Earth not the same temperature everywhere?
Because the Earth is a rotating sphere with oceans and a large moon. The fact that it’s a sphere means that sunlight falls on the equator at a roughly 90 degree angle and on the poles at roughly zero degrees. That spreads out the sunlight more at the poles than at the equator – which produces a temperature difference.
Why is Earth’s surface temperature different from Earth’s effective temperature?
This difference is because of the greenhouse effect – the ability of planetary atmospheres to trap heat. Solar energy usually reaches planet’s surface in the form of visible light. The result is that the atmospheric gasses opaque to infrared are warmed up. These are greenhouse gasses.
Is the temperature the same everywhere inside the Earth?
AT a small depth (from 12 to 40 feet) below the surface of the earth the temperature is constant throughout the year, and this constant temperature of the soil differs little from the mean annual temperature of the air, except on mountains more than 6,000 feet high.
Why different countries have different temperatures?
Many factors, such as elevation, ocean currents, distance from the sea, and prevailing winds, can affect the climate of an area. The latitude of an area indicates how far it is — north or south — of the equator. Latitude affects climate because it is related to the length and intensity of sunlight an area receives.
What are 2 reasons why the Earth’s surface does not heat equally?
Solar heating of the Earth’s surface is uneven because land heats faster than water, and this causes air to warm, expand and rise over land while it cools and sinks over the cooler water surfaces.
How does the uneven heating of Earth’s surface affect Earth’s weather patterns?
Earth’s orbit around the sun and its rotation on a tilted axis causes some parts of Earth to receive more solar radiation than others. This uneven heating produces global circulation patterns. For example, the abundance of energy reaching the equator produces hot humid air that rises high into the atmosphere.
Is effective temperature and surface temperature the same?
The surface temperature, calculated by assuming a perfect blackbody radiating the same amount of energy per unit area as the star, is known as the effective temperature of the star.
What is effective temperature difference?
The effective temperature ET is the temperature of an environment with 50\% relative humidity in which a person experiences the same amount of losses as in the situation under analysis.
Is the temperature the same at different places on the same day?
As the Earth moves, the angle at which sunlight strikes different places on the Earth at the same time of day changes because the Earth is tilted. When a particular location is tilted towards the Sun, warmer temperatures occur ; when the same place is tilted away from the Sun, colder temperature occur .
Why and how does temperature vary over different areas?
The temperature in a certain place is influenced by four main factors. Other factors include the location’s proximity to a body of water, the temperature of ocean currents if the location is near the coast, and the location’s elevation above sea level.
Why do temperatures differ between air land and water?
But why does this occur? Simply, it is the result of uneven heating between the land and water. Land changes temperature faster than water does. Therefore, as the sun shines and begins to heat the Earth’s surface, the land’s temperature increases faster than the water’s temperature.
Why is the weather warmer at higher latitudes?
Therefore, the solar radiation is concentrated over a smaller surface area, causing warmer temperatures. At higher latitudes, the angle of solar radiation is smaller, causing energy to be spread over a larger area of the surface and cooler temperatures.
How much does the earth’s temperature vary?
During the past 40 million years the global mean temperature has been varying by only 10 degrees Kelvin and in the past 10.000 years the variation was only of about 1 degree. [2] Thus, even on large time scales the earth’s temperature can be regarded as constant.
How does the sun affect the earth’s surface temperature?
Sunlight warms the soil, rocks, plants, roads, buildings, and bodies of water, all of which then emit the solar energy they absorb in the form of thermal (infrared) radiation that we perceive as heat which is observed as temperature. Surface skin temperatures are quantitative observations made by remote sensing instruments on satellites.
Why has the earth’s surface not warming?
The most likely explanation for the lack of significant warming at the Earth’s surface in the past decade or so is that natural climate cycles—a series of La Niña events and a negative phase of the lesser-known Pacific Decadal Oscillation—caused shifts in ocean circulation patterns that moved some excess heat into the deep ocean.