[Music] we know that the energy from the sun is absorbed reflected and sent back out into space as part of earth's energy balance but let's talk to a nasa scientist to see what happens if we shake things up earth's energy balance is very delicate meaning that small changes can have a really big impact some things that can make small changes include changes in vegetation on land changing the area of the ice caps or changing the composition of the atmosphere including the amount of dust that's in the atmosphere or the amount of carbon dioxide so for instance if you change the amount of vegetation that will change the amount of sunlight that is reflected back to space if you were to tear down a forest and replace it with asphalt you would make the surface a lot darker and so the surface would absorb a lot more of the solar radiation and then that would cause the area to heat up so if you reflected more solar radiation back to space earth's energy balance would be thrown off should be a lot more energy reflected back out to space than it's coming in a volcanic eruption can spew more ash into the atmosphere and that would reflect more solar radiation back to space and this could then lead to the ice caps growing and and the earth getting very very cold if we tip the scales the other way and we cause more energy to stay in the earth system than to leave then we would see the the system would warm a very efficient way of doing that in the past has been the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that's caused it to get very very warm in the past understanding earth's energy balance is very important for climate if we can understand the factors that control earth's energy balance that allows us to make better predictions of our future climate and making better predictions of the future climate then will help humans thrive and survive on planet earth the temperatures of earth and all the planets are determined by their energy balance just like opening a window in the winter anything that changes the amount of energy coming in and going out disturbs the energy balance but don't worry until we fully understand the impacts these changes have on earth nasa will continue to keep an eye on earth's energy balance for real world i'm miche and i'll see you next time [Music] you