We often take the temperature for granted except when we think it is too hot or too cold. We don't realize the relationship between the Sun and Earth's temperatures is very close and that the activity on the Sun plays a big role in what temperatures will be on Earth. Why it is hotter at the equator than in the Arctic; or even why the Arctic is " warmer " than Antarctica is directly related to their relative location to the Sun.

The Earth is in an exact position so that the average temperature is balanced between the freezing point of water (32 degrees F) and the normal body temperature of humans (98.6 degrees F). If the average temperature ever varied very far above or below these two extremes for very long, we could not survive.

If the Sun disappeared, the temperature would drop to close to absolute zero (-460 degrees F) and we would burn up all the Earth's reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas in about three days just to keep ourselves warm.

Scientists estimate that if the Earth were just 5% closer to the Sun, the increase in the temperature would be enough to melt the ice caps at the North and South poles. The water trapped in these caps of ice would raise the oceans level by as much as 300 feet. That would be enough to put every coastal city in the world under water.

The Sun is responsible for the heating of the Earth as well as the cooling.

The Sun doesn't hold perfectly still it moves around too. These changes in the Sun's distance from the Earth have been connected to observable weather patterns such as thunderstorms, rainfall, lightening strikes, droughts, ocean temperature fluctuations, and even volcanoes erupting.

Scientists also think that sunspot activity on the Sun is responsible for the condition in the Pacific Ocean called El Nino. El Nino is a substantial increase in the water temperature that results in an increase in the number of storms that occur. It also effects other areas of weather such as the amount of rainfall or snowfall that occurs. The weather condition called La Nina has also been connected to sunspot activity.

The rotation of the Earth on it's axis causes us to have alternate periods of day and night. During the day, the side toward the Sun warms up while the other side cools down. While this may be obvious it still has a big effect on the Earth's average temperature. The moon rotates only once every 29 ½ days instead of daily. Because of it's slow rotation one side of the moon gets very hot while the other gets very cold. If the Earth didn't rotate every 24 hours but rotated every 36 hours the temperature at noon would be well over 100 degrees farenheit and the temperature at midnight would drop below freezing even in summer. We would also have daily tornadoes, and storms due to the temperature changes stirred up by the wind.