Right now, the temperature of the Earth is pretty much perfect for humans, at around 13.9 degrees Celsius, or 57 degrees Fahrenheit.
Right now, the temperature of the Earth is pretty much perfect for humans, at around 13.9 degrees Celsius, or 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, that is much lower than "room temperature," which is around 20 degrees C (or 68 F)—but remember, this is for the whole planet. That average temperature includes the surface of all the oceans as well as regions near the poles. So maybe 13.9 C isn't that cold?
Of course, the bad news is that this temperature has been slowly increasing as humans add more and more greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, causing climate change. The greenhouse effect is the increase in the surface temperature due to those changes in the atmosphere.
But if you really want to understand Earth's climate, you need to start with the most basic model to calculate the temperature of the surface. That means figuring out what things would be like if there were not only no greenhouse gases—but no atmosphere at all.
Let’s see what happens.
Read more at Wired
Photo Credit: Tama66 via Pixabay
