Earth’s energy balance

Earth's energy budget accounts for the balance between energy Earth receives from the Sun, energy Earth radiates back into outer space after having been distributed throughout the five components of Earth's climate system and having thus powered the so-called "Earth’s heat engine". This system is made up of earth's water, ice, atmosphere, rocky crust, and all living things.

Quantifying changes in these amounts is required to accurately model the Earth's climate.

Received radiation is unevenly distributed over the planet, because the Sun heats equatorial regions more than polar regions. The atmosphere and ocean work non-stop to even out solar heating imbalances through evaporation of surface water, convection, rainfall, winds, and ocean circulation. Earth is very close to be (but not perfectly) in radiative equilibrium, the situation where the incoming solar energy is balanced by an equal flow of heat to space; under that condition, global temperatures will be relatively stable. Globally, over the course of the year, the Earth system—land surfaces, oceans, and atmosphere—absorbs and then radiates back to space an average of about 240 watts of solar power per square meter. Anything that increases or decreases the amount of incoming or outgoing energy will change global temperatures in response.

However, Earth's energy balance and heat fluxes depend on many factors, such as atmospheric composition (mainly aerosols and greenhouse gases), the albedo (reflectivity) of surface properties, cloud cover and vegetation and land use patterns.

Changes in surface temperature due to Earth's energy budget do not occur instantaneously, due to the inertia of the oceans and the cryosphere. The net heat flux is buffered primarily by becoming part of the ocean's heat content, until a new equilibrium state is established between radiative forcings and the climate response.

...
Wikipedia