Question about our distance from the sun.?

Question

Why is it that there is such an extreme temperature change when you move only 500 miles or so north or south of the equator? I mean, if you think about it, that 500 miles is a TINY fraction of how far away from the sun we really are. If you were to move the earth 100 miles closer or further away from the sun would we not be able to survive on it? I don't know much about science - unfortunately, in my highschool you passed if you knew how to read or were a vital component to the football/basketball team.

Answer 1

its not the distance, in fact during winter we are closer to the sin than in summer.
Its the ANGLE the suns rays strike the earth.
The steeper the angle, the more diffuse the rays are

Answer 2

One reason for this is the curvature of the Earth. When you are near the Equator and the Sun is overhead, the amount of the Sun's energy that falls on each square metre is more than the amount further north or south.
You can demonstrate this yourself with a torch and a globe (or better still, an exercise ball).
If you can set the torch so that it shines directly at the globe / ball, there will be a clear-cut circular area of light. However if you angle the torch so that it's pointing nearer one of the poles, then the area of light will be more spread out. The torch (= the sun) is obviously still putting out the same amount of energy, but it's being spread over a larger area of "ground".
There is another loss of enegry at the ground level due to the fact that the Sun is shining through a greater depth of the atmosphere, though this doesn't have such a large effect as covering a larger area. One effect that we can see is that when the sun shines though more of the atmosphere (i.e. at sunrise and sunset) its appearance changes from yellow to orange/red.
Your high school isn't the only place with a problem over science. The subject just isn't given the priority it really ought to have, considering there's hardly an aspect of life today that doesn't owe something to some branch of science. Unfortunately, you're more likely to find more books in a shop on astrology than on genuine science. I do what I can by presenting workshops for schools on space & astronomy, and trying to inspire students with the wonder of the universe.

Answer 3

This is a great question.

The distance away from the Sun doesn't have much to do with the temperature on the Earth. I mean, the Earth is closer to the Sun in the winter than it is in the Summer.

The whole temperature shift is due to the Earth's tilt. The Earth spins on its axis. That axis is tilted. Which means that the sun's rays are much more focused on the equator than either of the poles. Which explains the extra heat.

Science smiles,

Quill.

Answer 4

The earths orbit does get further and closer to the sun as the orbit pattern is elliptical , it varies much more than 100 miles.
The reason for example it is hotter at the equator is because the sun light is more concentrated , as the earth curves away from the equator being spherical in shape the light rays are less concentrated and there is more land surface absorbing the suns energy that at the equator.and is therefore colder.

Answer 5

It's all about the angle the light strikes the Earth at. Near the equator, the light's striking head-on. If we suppose the light rays are one inch apart (not that they really are), then they're strike near the equator at a distance apart of one inch. Near the poles, however, the angle is much flatter, so if you go very far north or south, the light rays might strike twelve inches apart, meaning you only get a twelfth of the light.

This also explains why day and night come gradually, rather than it being just as bright all day until the sun touches the horizon.

Answer 6

Lots of good answers here as to why temperature varies with latitude...but nobody has addressed your initial assumption: there is NOT an extreme temperature change when you move 500 miles either way from the equator. A difference of 500 miles in latitude will only have a 4-5 degree annual average temperature difference -- hardly extreme.

Answer 7

The change of temperature as you go to the poles is nothing to do with the distance from the sun. In fact, because the Earth goes around the sun in an ellipse, we are closest to the sun in January, when it is coldest in many places.

The difference in temperature between the equator and the poles is to do with the angle at which the sun's rays strike the ground. WHen they fall straight down at 90 degrees to the ground, each ray warms a small amount of ground, so it heats it up a lot. When the rays fall at a very low angle, when the sun is low in the sky, as it is at the poles, each ray has to warm a much greater amount of ground, so the heat is spread out more and has less effect.

Answer 8

It has to do with the incident angle of the sunlight on the Earth's sruface, not the distance from the sun. Since the Earth is tilted on it's axis, you only have the sun directly overhead at the equator. There, the incident angle of sunlight is 90 degrees so basically 100% of it's energy reaches the ground to cause warming. At higher latitudes the incident angle is less and thus some pecentage of the energy is relfected off the atmosphere and never reaches the ground to cause heating.

Answer 9

I think it has more to do with the angle at which the sun is hitting the earth at a particular distance from the equator. The earth is tilted on its north-south axis, and I vaguely recall that has something to do with it, too. Anyway, I think it's a great question and I hope someone else has a good answer -- I'll be watching for it.

Answer 10

It has nothing to do with the proximity to the sun. It has to do with the way the earth tilts. The more directly we are in line with the sun, the hotter it will be. In the winter, the sun is at more of an angle to us, hence the "rays" have to cover more land, hence cooler. In the summer, look at where the sun is. Usually directly up. In the winter, it is off center, more towards the horizon. In the winter, the northern hemisphere is actually closer to the sun by quite a bit. Our orbit of the sun isn't a perfect circle.

Answer 11

A layman's answer: What about at night, we are still the same distance but it's cooler, right? The closer we get to the equator, and the angle at which the sun is to the earth, the hotter it gets? It's been 45 yrs since high school but hope this helps.