Six months later at the opposite side of the orbit around the sun, the North Pole will be in total darkness 24 hours a day. The amount of solar heating of the polar latitudes varies greatly through the year. In the summer, polar latitudes receive almost as much solar energy as the tropics, while in the winter they receive no solar heat at all. This energy difference drives large mid-latitude storm systems as heat moves from the surplus in the equator to the deficit in the polar regions. In contrast, the summer has very similar heating at the equator and poles, such that the heat engine slows down, and mid-latitude storms lose their source of energy.
Summer storms tend to be very small scale and local.
Solar heating of the Earth and its atmosphere drives the large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns, and even the seasons. The amount of heat emitted from a solid surface is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature of the surface. So as the temperature of the Earth rises, it rapidly emits and loses to space an increasing amount of heat. Earth's Invisible Blanket Figure 1. The atmospheric greenhouse effect.