Images from “The Greenhouse Effect and Climate Change”

Back to Index Radiation characteristics of sun and planets Figure 1. The geometry of the sun-earth system and the planetary radiative temperatures of Earth, Venus and Mars. A proportion of the short wave radiation from the sun (orange arrows) is reflected back to space, as determined by the albedo or reflectivity of the planet, but the absorbed short wave radiation heats the planets which in turn radiate long wave energy back to space (red arrows). Sizes and distances are not to scale.   1 of 77 Next