Why aren’t areas near the poles such as Alaska or Antarctica completely baked since they get constant sunlight for 6 months a year?
In: 5
Because it’s not just about the hours of sunlight, but the angle. The sun is directly “over” the tropics, which means that the sunlight is coming straight down. Near the poles, the sunlight is coming at a very low angle, barely over the horizon.
So why does that matter? Picture a square piece of paper, that is perpendicular to a light source. It casts a square shadow, right? Now start angling it – the shadow shrinks, until it almost disappears when the light is hitting it edge on. The size of the shadow is how much light the paper is blocking (that’s what a shadow is), and how much light is hitting the paper.
Now picture those squares of paper covering the ground everywhere. Each square that the sunlight is hitting from directly overhead is getting *more light* than the squares that are angled. The steeper the angle, the less light is hitting each square. A square near the pole is getting barely any light at all. And that’s why it is colder there – there is simply less solar energy per square foot of ground.
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