• Question: is there such thing as global warming or is it just the sun getting closer

    Asked by kirstysargeant to Jen, Joseph, Michael on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Michael Taggart

      Michael Taggart answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Hi Kittysargeant – see your related question on this, i just posted a comment earlier this morning :-~)

    • Photo: Jen Gupta

      Jen Gupta answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      I’m very doubtful that our position relative to the Sun has anything to do with global warming. The Earth actually orbits the Sun on a slightly elliptical path, rather that a circular orbit. The closest we get to the Sun is 47,098,291 km (we call this perihelion) and the furthest away we get is 152,098,233 km (aphelion). This means that there is a maximum difference in distance from the Sun of 5 million km in a year!

      I’m not sure if we are getting closer to the Sun in general. It’s possible, for example the Moon is getting further away from us by about 4 cm a year! But I’d imagine that any change in our average distance from the Sun would be a lot less than the 5 million km difference in a year. People often think that our distance from the Sun during an orbit affects the temperature on Earth but actually it’s a lot more to do with the tilt of the Earth towards the Sun. There’s lots of stuff on the internet about this, like here http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=331

      Hope that helps! What do you think about global warming?

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