what percent of the sunlight is reflected and/or absorbed?
About 29–30% of the sunlight that reaches Earth is reflected back to space, and about 70–71% is absorbed by the atmosphere, land, and oceans.
Mini breakdown
- Incoming solar energy: treated as 100%.
- Reflected (Earth’s average albedo): about 29–30% goes back to space from clouds, atmospheric particles, ice, oceans, and land surfaces.
- Absorbed: the remaining ~70–71% is taken up by the atmosphere and surface, heating the planet and driving weather, climate, and biological processes like photosynthesis.
These numbers are global long‑term averages; they can shift slightly with things like cloud cover, ice melt, seasonal changes, and human‑driven changes to land use and air pollution.
TL;DR: Roughly 30% of sunlight is reflected, roughly 70% is absorbed. ✅
Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.