Conservation and Biodiversity
Be Cool: 4 Ways the Earth Beats the Heat
June 26, 2025
On June 26, we celebrate a very special day around the globe: World Refrigeration Day, which is dedicated to recognizing the importance of cooling technology. With refrigerators keeping everything from our perishable foods to medicines fresh, cooling is truly a crucial part of our everyday lives.
Keeping cool is just as important for our planet. The Earth is constantly being bombarded by rays from the sun. This heat is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere like carbon dioxide and methane that trap it and cause the planet to become warmer in a process known as the greenhouse effect. Since 1990, the warming impact of these greenhouse gases has increased by more than 51%, making it more important than ever to take action to protect our climate.
While refrigeration works great for us if we are lucky enough to have access to electricity, our planet does not have a giant space fan or a fridge and has had to get a lot more creative in its 4.5 billion years of existence. Here are 4 ways the Earth keeps itself from overheating, and how climate change is messing them up.
1. Reflecting Sunlight With Glaciers
Glaciers, ice sheets, and snow are some of the Earth’s clever methods of cooling itself. The Earth becomes warmer when it absorbs heat from the sun. But instead of absorbing this heat, glaciers, being primarily made up of ice and snow, reflect it back into space. Why? Well ice and snow both have a very high albedo, a measure of how reflective a surface is, meaning that almost all of the solar radiation that hits them is reflected back into space, sparing the planet from further heating.
However, as global temperatures rise at unprecedented rates, glaciers around the world are melting faster than ever. Recent studies estimate that between 1985 and 2022, Greenland’s ice sheets have lost about 1,140 billion tons of ice. If current trends continue, the Arctic is projected to experience its first ice-free summer in 2034.
What compounds this issue is that the melting of ice and snow exposes the underlying surfaces which have much lower albedos, and therefore reflect less heat back into space and instead absorb it. As a result, ice sheets and glaciers will melt even more rapidly, thus continuing a disastrous cycle.
2. Freezing Carbon With Permafrost
Permafrost makes up nearly 15% of the land surface in the North Hemisphere and is defined as any soil, sand, or rock that has measured below 0ºC (or 32ºF) for at least 2 years. While permafrost is normally found beneath frozen ground that thaws and refreezes annually, the deeper layers of permafrost, ranging in depth from 1 meter to greater than 1500 meters, remain frozen all year round.
Permafrost helps keep the planet cool by acting as a freezer for greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide. The freezing temperatures of permafrost prevent organic matter from decomposing, meaning it is not released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. For thousands of years permafrost was a perfect carbon sink, storing 1,460-1,600 metric tons of organic carbon, which is twice as much as the amount currently in the atmosphere.
But now as global temperatures rise and permafrost begins to melt these carbon sinks are thawing and likely to release the carbon dioxide they store. When permafrost thaws, microbes decompose the previously frozen organic matter, resulting in the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which further accelerates climate change.
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Thawing permafrost does not only have grim implications for the planet, but also human infrastructure. As much as 80% of the buildings in Russian cities like Norilsk City and 30% of the roads on the Tibetan plateau are experiencing damage as a result of the permafrost that they are built on melting.
It is currently projected that 20% of the world’s permafrost may melt by 2040.
3. Capturing Carbon With Rocks
Studies have found that the weathering of rocks can regulate the Earth’s temperatures over the course of long geological time scales. Here’s how: carbonic acid, the form that carbon dioxide takes when it dissolves in rainwater, reacts with minerals, like magnesium and calcium, which are released as rock weathers. This in turn forms new rocks like calcium carbonate, which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help to reduce the greenhouse effect.
This process usually takes millions of years, so it is not likely to mitigate the immediate and current effects of climate change.
However, enhanced weathering (EW) is a new technique based on this natural process that is currently being used to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It consists of dispersing ground silicate rock particles to increase the rate of weathering in order to reduce the greenhouse effect.
A field trial of EW on farms in the United States Corn Belt not only captured on average 10.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare, but also increased maize and soybean yields by 12 to 16%.
Studies show that widely implementing EW on farmland could help the United States reach net zero emissions by 2050. While mobilization of this technology will likely take decades before we reach that point due to its cost, it is an important step towards cooling down the Earth. And it’s a trick the Earth’s been using for millions of years!
4. Cooling the Planet with Plants
Plants are crucial for life on Earth, as they produce much of the oxygen we need to survive. In fact, terrestrial trees and plants produce about 28% of the Earth’s oxygen — the other 70% comes from marine plants, like phytoplankton in our oceans.
Plants also contribute to keeping the Earth cool. Through photosynthesis, plants not only make oxygen but also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere thus removing a major greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Trees are especially effective carbon sinks because their wood stores large amounts of carbon and decomposes slowly, keeping that carbon locked away from the atmosphere for many years.
Recent research has also revealed that microbes living on tree bark can help remove methane—a potent greenhouse gas responsible for about 30% of global warming—from the atmosphere. This means trees not only capture carbon dioxide, but also play a surprising role in reducing other greenhouse gases.
Plants can also help cool the Earth by naturally releasing biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs). BVOCs form particles called secondary organic aerosols that make clouds more reflective, helping them cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight, similar to how glaciers do it.
Unfortunately, deforestation threatens our world’s vegetation as 10 million hectares of forest are lost each year and 70 million hectares are affected by fires. It is estimated that by 2050, approximately 70% of the Amazon rainforest, the largest rainforest in the world, could be destroyed, indicating a major threat to our world’s vegetation and its cooling potential.
What Can You Do?
It is clear that some of Earth’s best methods for regulating its temperatures are natural ones. Let’s help the planet – here are some ways YOU can help contribute to keeping our planet cool.
First, you can support EARTHDAY.ORG’s theme for 2025 Our Power, Our Planet, a call for renewable energy generation to be tripled globally by 2030. Solar and wind are methods of generating energy without releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and keeping us all cooler.
You can also sign our petition Tell Businesses: Stop Deforestation to put sustainability first and prevent the loss of our forests globally and why not buy a tree with our Canopy Project.
As you take a moment to appreciate the convenience of modern technology on World Refrigeration Day, remember the only thing cooler than your refrigerators, freezers, or air conditioning is keeping our planet cool as well!
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