The Earth’s Energy Balance
As the earth gets warmer or cooler there are a myriad of countervailing effects. This chart is taken from NASA.gov. Here all the major contributors to theearth’s energy balance are identified but,
a word of caution,
this is an oversimplification of a very complex world.
Earth’s energy budget describes the balance between the radiant energy that reaches Earth from the sun and the energy that flows from Earth back out to space. As discussed above, energy from the sun is largely in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. About 30 percent of the sun’s incoming energy is reflected back to space by clouds, atmospheric molecules, tiny suspended particles called aerosols, and the Earth’s land including snow and ice surfaces. This was discussed above as the Earth’s albedo.