the sun is constantly hitting the earth with many terrawatts of energy and yet the temperature on earth is relatively stable. Where does all this energy go?

Question

Does the earth also emit a comparable amount of energy somehow?

In: 3

Answer 1

Most of the energy the sun transmits doesn’t hit earth. The energy that does is the reason the earth isn’t -220°c, like on Pluto. It does significantly heat up the earth.

Another part of it is that it doesn’t just heat up the surface of earth, but the ground beneath it gets some of the warmth as well. The air does too. The atmosphere absorbs a lot of the heat the earth gets from the sun.

Lastly, the earth does indeed reflect some of the energy back into space.