Hi....what could cause the Earth to cool? Hmm well if you consider climate cycles I think of Milankovich. Due to the axial tilt and eccentricity of the Earth there have been in several cooling down periods calculated at 100,000-year ice age cycles for the past few million years or so...this has been expressed by global glaciation and ice cover...check out Wikipedia for more info...also you might want to look at something called the runaway albedo affect...this is essentially when an ice cover (significantly larger than the ones we see at the poles today) reflects more sunlight thus causing a cooling down and therefore growth of the ice caps...obviously the explanation is much more detailed than that
) Check out Earth cooling at the end of the Neoproterozoic for more info about why the earth might cool....latitide is best explained in terms of the angle at which the Suns rays hit the Earth....at the equator. the Sun is directly above us and higher in the sky for longer times of the day...the amount of radiation which hits the equator is far larger than that which hits at the poles....the angle of the sun at the pole is much lower so we get less heating essentially at the poles....the importance of albedo is also important....at the poles the white of the ice reflects the suns rays so it essentially prevents heating up in places which are covered in ice....for those which arent covered by ice they are heated less strictly because the sun is at a lower angle in the sky...hope that helps
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03-31-2008, 11:29 PM
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