Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to re: Hemispheres

re: Hemispheres
gbaikie — (archived)

"Maybe Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean are factors? There is getting to be more and more open water in the Arctic in the summer, allowing more absorption/less reflection than ice. Antarctica, even if it were to lose a lot of ice, would still be a huge ice-covered body, reflecting a lot."

Maybe. But maybe open water adds less heat than compared to ice, or maybe it's not significant either way. In Arctic and Antarctic the sun is always low on the horizon even in mid summer with sun energy hitting at low angle water will be more reflective than if hitting at higher angle such as at the tropic during the middle of the day.

The sunlight also has to travel thru more atmosphere because of this low angle thereby making weaker by time it reaches the surface. It would interesting to know the difference between a body of water in arctic and equal size body in tropic as far which absorbed more solar radiation energy per day [24 hrs of constant sunlight in arctic summer compared to 24 hrs of day and nite in the tropics]. And also compare equal size body ocean in arctic which has ice- and also different types of ice and thickness.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (60 posts)