Solveeit Logo

Question

Question: How is energy transferred from the sun to the atmosphere?...

How is energy transferred from the sun to the atmosphere?

Explanation

Solution

The outer space is a vacuum i.e. it doesn’t have any material medium through which any waveform can pass, but the sun radiates energy. In radiation, the energy doesn’t need any material medium to travel. The light comes in the form of packets called photons.

Complete step by step answer:
Heat energy is transferred through radiation. The Sun is a huge thermal reactor about 93 million miles away. In heat transfer by radiation, energy is carried by electromagnetic waves from a starting point to the space surrounding it and does not involve contact with matter. The other forms of heat transfer cannot produce any of the energy that arrives on Earth through the vacuum of space. The Sun’s energy gets to the Earth through radiation. Every object around you is continually radiating, unless its temperature is at absolute zero, it is the temperature at which molecules completely stop moving. Objects emit radiation when high energy electrons in a high atomic level fall to lower energy levels. The energy lost is emitted as light or electromagnetic radiation. The energy that is absorbed by an atom causes its electrons to "jump" up to higher energy levels. All objects absorb and emit radiation. When the absorption of energy balances the emission of energy, the temperature of an object stays constant. If the absorption of energy is greater than the emission of energy, the temperature of an object rises. If the absorption of energy is less than the emission of energy, the temperature of an object falls.

Note:
The light radiated by the sun after getting filtered from the ozone layer the non-harmful rays reaches the earth surface earth absorbs a part of the energy and the remaining energy is reflected from the earth surface a part of this reflected energy is captured and stored by the greenhouse gases to maintain earth's temperature any rest is reflected into space