I understand that the sun gives energy primarily in the form of sunlight, which contains various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. If the earth absorbs some of the energy, does the earth’s “total energy” accumulate?
In: Planetary Science
The total energy of the earth does not accumulate, at least not much. You can argue that some of the energy on the planet is stored chemically in plants and such, but most of it is just the thermal energy of the planet.
All objects that has a temperature emits radiation via blackbody radiation , however the amount of radiation per second depends massively on the temperature at a rate of T^4, this is called Stefan–Boltzmann law, so if you double the temperature(in kelvin) you get 16 times more radiation per second.
The earth is basically at an equilibrium, where the amount of energy it gets from the sun, is equal to the amount of energy that it emits. Think of it like this, the sun emits a ton of energy, but only a tiny tiny fraction hits the earth. Therefore the earth has to only emit a tiny tiny fraction of the suns energy to stay even.
If the sun started giving us more energy, the temperature of the earth would rise until it reaches the new equilibrium. Or if we emit a ton of greenhouse gasses which contains the radiation the planet emits meaning the planet now has to have a higher temperature to get into equilibrium and we get global warming.
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