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
Yes and no. The sun gives light/radiation. It’s not like a bonfire in which the space around it is hot – because heat/cold are a product of the movement of molecules.
However, infrared radiation *does* heat up molecules, and we got plenty of those on Earth. Our atmosphere captures a good amount of it – probably too much nowadays due to humans churning out greenhouse gasses like no one’s business.
But an essential function of energy reflection makes life on the surface of earth possible: our magnetic field reflects a bunch of harmful radiation from the sun. We can see this in auroras (Northern Lights). The ozone layer of our atmosphers also reflects (mainly) ultraviolet radiation, hence our international effort to ban things like CFC’s (common in refrigerants).
We should also take into account that we have a bunch of organisms such as plants, algae, etc. That photosynthesize, meaning they convert sunlight into energy. This energy, in turn, is consumed by herbivores, then those herbivores get consumed by carnivores (of course, there’s a loss in energy the higher up the food chain you go) but the point is that the sun fuels surface life.
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