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Over the following approximately 4 billion years, the Sun's energy output increased and the composition of the Earth atmosphere changed. The Great Oxygenation Event around 2.4 billion years ago was the most notable alteration of the atmosphere.
Ernest Rutherford suggested that the Sun's output could be maintained by an internal source of heat, and suggested radioactive decay as the source. [196] However, it would be Albert Einstein who would provide the essential clue to the source of the Sun's energy output with his mass–energy equivalence relation E = mc 2. [197]
The actual figure varies with the Sun's angle and atmospheric circumstances. Ignoring clouds, the daily average insolation for the Earth is approximately 6 kWh/m 2 = 21.6 MJ/m 2. The output of, for example, a photovoltaic panel, partly depends on the angle of the sun relative to the
Climate 101 is a Mashable series that answers provoking and salient questions about Earth’s warming climate. Yes, the sun is a profoundly important factor in Earth's climate. It always will be ...
The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 122 PW·year = 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. [12] In 2002 (2019), this was more energy in one hour (one hour and 25 minutes) than the world used in one year. [13] [14] Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass. [15]
Of the ~340 W/m 2 of solar radiation received by the Earth, an average of ~77 W/m 2 is reflected back to space by clouds and the atmosphere and ~23 W/m 2 is reflected by the surface albedo, leaving ~240 W/m 2 of solar energy input to the Earth's energy budget. This amount is called the absorbed solar radiation (ASR).
The Proba-3 mission will also play an important role in climate studies by performing ongoing monitoring of the Sun’s energy output. ... like 99.978 per cent of the energy available on Earth ...
The angular diameter of the Earth as seen from the Sun is approximately 1/11,700 radians (about 18 arcseconds), meaning the solid angle of the Earth as seen from the Sun is approximately 1/175,000,000 of a steradian. Thus the Sun emits about 2.2 billion times the amount of radiation that is caught by Earth, in other words about 3.846×10 26 watts.