Introduction
Of course, the entire world is not blue. The clouds themselves are white, reflecting any viewers’ white, straight sunlight back at them. Ice, such as the polar caps of our planet, appears white for the same reasons. Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? Similarly, the continents seem brown or green from afar, depending on the season and how densely vegetated the ground is.
This teaches us a crucial lesson: the Earth isn’t blue because the sky/atmosphere is. If that were the case, all of the light bouncing off the surface would be blue, which we don’t observe. Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? However, there is a suggestion that comes from the really blue areas of the Earth: its seas and oceans. The tint of blue that the Earth’s water appears in varies according to its depth.
You’ve probably heard that the ocean is blue because the sky is blue and water reflects the sky. The sky is, without a doubt, blue. And the sky is blue because our atmosphere scatters blue (shorter-wavelength) light more efficiently than red (longer-wavelength) light. Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? During the day, the sky appears blue because short-wavelength light hitting the atmosphere is dispersed in all directions, with more “blues” reaching our eyes than any other wavelength.
The reason Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky?
The reason, why the Earth looks Blue from the sky, is thus;
The way light bounces off air molecules influences how people perceive the sky and the ocean. The atmosphere is mostly composed of two gases: nitrogen and oxygen. Different types of light are absorbed, scattered, or emitted by these molecules.
Because red, yellow, and orange light have longer wavelengths that are less impacted by atmospheric molecules, they are not absorbed, but blue light is dispersed and radiated, resulting in the blue sky we see every day. Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? Blue light is less apparent from space, but it contributes to the blue hue of the Earth. Because there is no sunlight to interact with the gases at night, the sky turns dark.
Satellites and astronauts in orbit around the Earth perceive a blue globe due to some of the same features. The sheer volume of water on Earth causes it to seem blue in many cases, but there are other variables at work as well.
Water covers the majority of the earth’s surface (71% of its total area). From the Arctic Ocean to the Southern Ocean, the Earth contains countless oceans and seas. Although there is red-hot heat under the Earth’s surface, Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? water dominates the top layer. The seas encompass around 71% of the Earth and are blue, while land makes up the remaining 29% and ranges in hue from green to brown to white.
As a result, the Earth seems to be a blue marble. If the globe was mostly made up of land masses, it would appear to be an entirely different hue. Water absorbs white light from radiation (sunlight). Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? Although the sunshine seems white, it is actually a mixture of lights of various hues (Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red). When sunlight strikes the water, it absorbs all hues of white light and reflects only blue light. As a result, the world appears blue from space. If the water absorbs all hues but reflects just yellow, it appears yellow.
Another way to put it is that water bodies (oceans, lakes, rivers) seem blue (despite the fact that water is colorless) due to the way sunlight is selectively dispersed as it passes through our atmosphere. Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? Water absorbs more red light in sunlight when the Raman effect is included. Water also improves the dispersion of blue light in the environment in this way.
Rayleigh scattering law states that the quantity of scattering is inversely related to the fourth power of the wavelength. Because there are more N2 and O2 molecules (78 percent and 21 percent, respectively) in the atmosphere, blue light with a shorter wavelength is dispersed more.
Thus, the world would not be blue if its atmosphere lacked sufficient O2 and N2 molecules. Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? The scattering is determined by the properties of gaseous molecules in the environment… This also applies to other planets. (For example, Mars seems red, Venus appears yellow, and so on.)
BOTTOM LINE
The blue tint is not due to the atmosphere. Our atmosphere is so thin that it cannot be responsible for the hue of our planet. The sky and ocean aren’t blue because of reflections; they’re both blue of their own own. Why does Earth Looks Blue From The Sky? A human on the surface would still see a blue sky if our seas were completely removed, and if our skies were completely removed (but we still have liquid water on the surface), our globe would still seem blue.
