How, at 93 million miles away, does the sun feel so warm, yet when a simple cloud passes over it the warmth is incredibly dampened?
In: Planetary Science
Heat is transmitted in the form of photons, the same way visible light is. What happens to visible light when a cloud passes between you and the Sun? It gets dark.
Exactly the same thing happens with heat. The infrared photons are blocked. Since water vapour is very efficient at blocking that particular wavelength of photon, the effect is even more pronounced.
Think of a photon like a bullet being fired at you from above. It doesn’t matter how far away the gun is, it’s still going to hit you. If you disregard the friction of the atmosphere, the bullet will hit just as hard. The inverse cubed law means that the farther away you get from the Sun, the fewer photons actually hit you, but the ones that do still hit with the same energy.
A cloud just stops a lot of them from reaching you.
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