Atmosphere 2: A Cold White Marble

Parte Due: A Cold White Marble

The Earth has also a temperature (currently around 288 K, or 15 Celsius), which means it also disperses its heat by emitting.

In a way, that is quite obvious. Earth keeps absorbing solar energy and, if it didn’t, it would keep heating up to infinity. For our temperature to be stable, the power that’s being absorbed and the power that’s being emitted have to be the same.

That allows us to write down some equations. Let us pretend that we don’t know the temperature of the Earth yet, and that we have to calculate it. What do we get?