Solar energy can, of course, be gathered on Earth, but only about half of the sun's radiation ever makes it to the Earth's surface--the rest is either absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back by clouds.
Coral reefs are home to 25 percent of the world's marine fish species, and cover 1 percent of the Earth's surface, making them the largest single living structure on Earth.
The basic concept is the same as that underpinning the "white roads" idea -- the development of a technology that can reflect a proportion of the sun's radiation away from the earth's surface and back out into space, thereby cooling the atmosphere and slowing, or even reversing the damaging effects of global climate change.
CNN: The shield of Ra: Could solar reflection save the planet?
The data, from NASA's TIMED mission, show that Earth's thermosphere (the layer above 62 miles or 100 km above the Earth's surface) "responds quite dramatically to the effects of the 11-year solar cycle, " Stan Solomon of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
The ozone layer protects living things on the Earth's surface from the Sun's ultra-violet radiation.
On the issue of storms affecting more of the earth's surface, the worriers are, according to the models, just plain wrong.
Geothermal systems gather energy present beneath the earth's surface, where the temperature averages 55 degrees (higher in Texas, lower in North Dakota), and concentrate it to provide space heating.
The new (ie, old) wax has proved a faithful model of the earth's surface, and the researchers have seen features other than faults that remind them of real plates.
Here on the Earth's surface we live at the bottom of a gravity well.
When Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, was born one fifth of the Earth's surface was covered by the British Empire.
The caving crew descends through tight passages hundreds of feet beneath the Earth's surface, guided by the gust of air that marks the cave's primary passage.
Instruments show there has been some warming of the Earth's surface since 1979, but the actual value is subject to large errors.
BBC: NEWS | Special Reports | 629 | 629 | Climate scepticism: The top 10
As near as anyone can figure, the Earth's surface temperature increased 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century.
Each time the capsule approached the earth's surface, its cargo was heralded by the wail of a siren and applause from relatives and rescuers assembled nearby.
For GPS, this is an enormous issue because it turns out that the clocks on the satellites drift by almost 40, 000 nanoseconds per day relative to the clocks on the ground because they are high above the earth's surface (and therefore in a weaker gravitational field) and are moving fast relative to the ground.
The areas are sparsely populated, and the earthquake was 62 miles beneath the Earth's surface.
But he never told his mother he was working a half mile under the Earth's surface.
So planting trees in these climates actually has the net effect of warming the Earth's surface.
They are known as the "high seas" and they cover 50 percent of the Earth's surface.
Iridium is normally rare at the earth's surface, but it is more abundant in meteorites.
Does this cast doubt on the data which show warming at the earth's surface?
The spacecraft will maintain the longest continuous image record of the Earth's surface as viewed from space.
Since oceans cover two-thirds of the Earth's surface, it's more likely debris will hit water than land.
Smos aims to see steps of about 4% on this range across 50km-wide segments of the Earth's surface.
Hot springs are perhaps the most recognizable signs of geothermal energy stored under the Earth's surface in any specific area.
When that happens, it will be the biggest and fastest change to the Earth's surface ever made by human influence.
Since Russia and the U.S. signed a partial test-ban treaty in 1963, their blasts have been deep below the earth's surface.
All those miners were rescued, pulled one by one from hundreds of meters beneath the Earth's surface with a specially designed capsule.
Russia will continue to have the sad distinction of covering 12% of the earth's surface, while attracting only 0.3% of its tourists.
"Cryosphere" refers to the regions of the Earth's surface where ice predominates.
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