The upward arrows at the surface are reflected short-wave flux , emitted long-wave flux from the Stefan–Boltzmann law, and, when positive, conductive heat arriving from the planetary ice shell. The downward arrow is the incident solar flux . The planetary surface energy balance is therefore
The relevant planetary albedo is the Bond albedo. In a steady one-dimensional shell, Fourier's law and make the upward conductive flux
where points downward and . Substitution gives the requested implicit equation
Planetary equilibrium temperature Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-06
For a planet of Bond albedo orbiting a blackbody star of radius and temperature , complete global redistribution and negligible internal heat give
Uniform dayside-only reradiation replaces by . The planetary equilibrium temperature describes absorbed stellar power; including an intrinsic cooling flux gives a total effective temperature , distinct from . Neither quantity is necessarily the greenhouse-warmed surface temperature.
Planetary phase integral Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
The phase integral converts a monochromatic geometric albedo into the corresponding reflected power fraction. The bolometric Bond albedo is the incident-spectrum-weighted average of .
Planetary surface energy balance Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
A planetary surface energy balance equates absorbed short-wave radiation and heat supplied from below with reflected short-wave radiation and emitted long-wave radiation. With incident flux , Bond albedo , conductive upward flux , and emissivity ,
Consider an idealized planet that is a sphere of radius , illuminated by parallel sunlight of irradiance , measured on a plane perpendicular to the rays. Its intercepting projected area is , whereas its total surface area is . Therefore the incoming power averaged per unit total surface area is
where is the broadband Bond albedo. The factor four is a sphere geometry result, not an atmospheric transmission factor. Local sunlight still varies over the illuminated hemisphere and vanishes on the dark side.
Now stipulate a single spatially uniform temperature , no atmosphere, no internal heating, and emissivity one for outgoing thermal radiation. This is a thermal blackbody model using the Stefan–Boltzmann law; the prescribed solar-band reflection is treated separately, so the body is not a perfect absorber at all wavelengths. Let be the effective heat capacity per unit surface area, in . Conservation of energy gives the ordinary differential equation
Here is net heating per unit surface area, in , and is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. Use , rounded from the exact constant reported by NIST. [ref] The uniform temperature is a model assumption: generally the surface average of differs from the fourth power of the surface-average temperature.
For fixed Bond albedo , radiative equilibrium requires , giving
With the illustrative solar constant , the global incoming average is :
Fixed Bond albedoReflected average ()Absorbed average ()Equilibrium temperature ()
Doubling albedo here lowers the equilibrium temperature by , rather than halving it: the absorbed fraction changes from to , and thermal radiation scales as . These stipulated Bond albedos are whole-planet examples, not measurements of bare water and ice. The model predicts neither Earth's modern surface temperature nor its response to actual climate change; it omits the greenhouse effect, spatial heat transfer and seasons.
Figure 1.
From a sunlit disk to a whole sphere: geometry and fixed-albedo energy budgets
. The disk intercepts sunlight over area pi R squared; a uniform emitting sphere has four times that area. Both fixed-albedo examples use the same 1360 watts per square metre illumination and thermal emissivity one. Details.
Each fixed-albedo equilibrium is a stable equilibrium: for , the derivative is . A small temperature increase produces net cooling, and a small decrease produces net heating. This is the simplest expression of the stabilizing Planck feedback. Allowing albedo to fall with temperature adds a competing term, as in ice-ocean albedo feedback.