Actually, that would prevent summer from coming to the Northern hemisphere and snow would not melt. The result would not just be an ice age, but a snowball Earth.
No.
If the only change you're making is to the tilt of the earth, then the total amount of heat from the sun that arrives at the earth remains the same. All you are doing is redistributing it slightly.
As CW has indicated that this would increase the extent of the polar glaciated area as seasonal changes would disappear... Thus, no spring thaw. Ice would remain inter-annually.
At the equator, there wouldn't be too much change. There is already only very limited seasonality. It is always hot, humid and wet, there is no dry season. The equator would get more of the same... Just a little hotter ( as the midday sun would be exactly directly overhead EVERY day).
The equator has a special daily pattern that cools it. Every day, the sun comes up. Water vapour evaporates into the atmosphere and clouds form. Cloud causes more cloud ( it sucks moist air up into it). The cloud reflects heat back to space and shades the ground, reducing further evaporation. The clouds build for a while until they get big enough for water droplets to occur, and then cool rain falls.
The energy moves like this.
The sun warms the earth. Water evaporates, and energy is carried upwards by the water vapour as latent energy (the energy required to change the state of the water form liquid to gas). This is energy is taken from the earth, thus the earth is cooled. As the water vapour rises it cools in the higher colder atmosphere. This, and the lower pressure cause it to condense back to water. The water vapour has to give up its latent heat as it returns to liquid, and this is radiated away... half upwards(towards space), half downwards (towards the earth).
This is the mechanism by which heat is removed to space at the equator. It is what stops the temperature having a "runaway" build-up. It is driven by temperature. As the temperature rises at the equator (as would occur if the earth had no tilt) then this daily cycle would become more vigorous. The warmer it gets, the more heat it removes to space. Water vapour evaporation and condensation and convection moderate the temperature at the equator. It is driven by heat, regardless of what causes that heat.
Edit. CW and Darwinist both refer to something else happening. Removing the tilt (which changes according the the known 'Milankovitch' cycles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitc... ) has another effect on how heat from the sun is retained by the Earth.
Without seasons, polar ice accumulates, and does not thaw. The ground is white all year 'round. This reflects more of the suns heat back into space than when the ground is darker. This means that overall, year on year the earth gets to keep progressively less of the suns heat. That is why CW suggests that removing the tilt could switch the climate into an ice age... even 'snowball Earth'.
The earth is particularly sensitive to this change in the northern hemisphere, as the potential polar region has a lot more land than sea. Snow falling on land will accumulate and reflect the suns heat. in the southern hemisphere, antarctica is surrounded by ocean; snow will fall on the sea and be melted ( by heat circulated through the oceans from the equator, but that's another story).
It is the extent of permanent ice cover in the northern hemisphere that flips our climate between its two stable states; temperate (as it is at the moment) or ice bound (which we really don't enjoy too much)
I don't think so, though things would certainly be different. You would not have seasons, of course, but over the equatorial regions, there wouldn't be much difference as the noonday sun is never far from overhead anyway.
There are changes that occur over periods of tens of thousands of years which are due to variations in the earth's orbit, of which axial tilt is one. Google Milankovitch Cycles for more detail.
These changes, along with the unequal distribution of land between the northern and southern hemispheres, determine when ice ages occur, also the interglacial warmer periods such as the one we are in now.
So, if the earth had no tilt, then this variation would not occur. The earth's temperature would, I assume, just be the average between the two extremes of ice age and interglacial. As we are currently in an interglacial, then if the earth had no tilt, it would be a degree or two cooler than it is today.
I don't know for certain, but that's what I would guess. Hope it makes some sort of sense.
There would be no seasons, and the tropics would very hot and the poles very cold, and a narrow band where it would be livable in between, not a nice place to live
According to "Inconvenience Truth" the world only had until 2008 to stop global warming. Now it is TOO LATE.
90% of humanity will die HORRIBLE deaths from floods, hurricanes, droughts, blizzards, asteroids, tsunamis and earthquakes.
Only the Lear jet people like Michael Moore and Al Gore will survive the coming climate APOCALYPSE in their underground mansions.
No, but it would mean the livable areas would be a lot different to now.
If Earth did not have a tilt then all the suns rays would be directed at the equatorial region. Wouldnt this increase the amount of water vapor in our atmosphere enough to cause a runaway greenhouse effect?
