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Polar regions are colder than equatorial ones for a simple reason - geometry.

More specifically, it is caused by the greater angle of the Sun's rays to the surface of the Earth. As you go farther north, the Earth's (mostly) spherical surface bends back from the direction of the Sun's rays, and the same amount of photons are spread over a larger area.

What's more, the closer you get to the poles, this already-attenuated sunlight has to go through more of the Earth's atmosphere, and so more sunlight is scattered, and consequently less will reach the ground.

The sun's angle is more important to climate differences than the modest variation in Earth's distance to the sun, because the atmosphere is kept warm by the greenhouse effect. It's not the direct light that matters: Air is more or less transparent to the visible light that makes up most of the Sun's spectrum. Instead, the ground absorbs that light and reradiates it as infrared and microwave radiation. That longer-wavelength radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, but if the ground is not radiating as much infrared because it absorbed less sunlight, the atmosphere above it doesn't get warmed quite so much.

Granted, if the Earth's orbit were much more eccentric then the variation in distance to the Sun would matter more to climate variation. But it doesn't.

This would happen even if Earth's axis weren't tilted. Polar regions would still be cold and equatorial regions would still be hotter. In fact, the difference would be greater because there'd be less mixing.

Here's an image to show the difference:
^{Source: Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 3.0}

This site has another good image illustrating the difference (it's copyrighted so I won't embed it directly).

Polar regions are colder than equatorial ones for a simple reason - geometry.

More specifically, it is caused by the greater angle of the Sun's rays to the surface of the Earth. As you go farther north, the Earth's (mostly) spherical surface bends back from the direction of the Sun's rays, and the same amount of photons are spread over a larger area.

What's more, the closer you get to the poles, this already-attenuated sunlight has to go through more of the Earth's atmosphere, and so more sunlight is scattered, and consequently less will reach the ground.

Here's an image (Thanks, Pont) to show the difference:
^{Source: Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 3.0}

The sun's angle is more important to climate differences than the modest variation in Earth's distance to the sun, because the atmosphere is kept warm by the greenhouse effect. It's not the direct light that matters: Air is more or less transparent to the visible light that makes up most of the Sun's spectrum. Instead, the ground absorbs that light and reradiates it as infrared and microwave radiation. That longer-wavelength radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, but if the ground is not radiating as much infrared because it absorbed less sunlight, the atmosphere above it doesn't get warmed quite so much.

Granted, if the Earth's orbit were much more eccentric then the variation in distance to the Sun would matter more to climate variation. But it doesn't.

This would happen even if Earth's axis weren't tilted. Polar regions would still be cold and equatorial regions would still be hotter. In fact, the difference would be greater because there'd be less mixing.

The image below shows the what happens to the energy the Earth receives from the Sun:

^{Source: NASA}

That shows an average over the entire Earth. As you approach the poles, the percentage "reflected by clouds and atmosphere" goes up while total energy "absorbed by surface" per unit area goes down. And since ice has a high albedo, this is reinforced by the percentage "reflected by surface".

Polar regions are colder than equatorial ones for a simple reason - geometry.

More specifically, it is caused by the greater angle of the Sun's rays to the surface of the Earth. As you go farther north, the Earth's (mostly) spherical surface bends back from the direction of the Sun's rays, and the same amount of photons are spread over a larger area.

What's more, the closer you get to the poles, this already-attenuated sunlight has to go through more of the Earth's atmosphere, and so more sunlight is scattered, and consequently less will reach the ground.

The sun's angle is more important to climate differences than the modest variation in Earth's distance to the sun, because the atmosphere is kept warm by the greenhouse effect. It's not the direct light that matters: Air is more or less transparent to the visible light that makes up most of the Sun's spectrum. Instead, the ground absorbs that light and reradiates it as infrared and microwave radiation. That longer-wavelength radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, but if the ground is not radiating as much infrared because it absorbed less sunlight, the atmosphere above it doesn't get warmed quite so much.

Granted, if the Earth's orbit were much more eccentric then the variation in distance to the Sun would matter more to climate variation. But it doesn't.

This would happen even if Earth's axis weren't tilted. Polar regions would still be cold and equatorial regions would still be hotter. In fact, the difference would be greater because there'd be less mixing.

This site has a good image illustrating the difference (it's copyrighted so I won't embed it directly).

Polar regions are colder than equatorial ones for a simple reason - geometry.

More specifically, it is caused by the greater angle of the Sun's rays to the surface of the Earth. As you go farther north, the Earth's (mostly) spherical surface bends back from the direction of the Sun's rays, and the same amount of photons are spread over a larger area.

What's more, the closer you get to the poles, this already-attenuated sunlight has to go through more of the Earth's atmosphere, and so more sunlight is scattered, and consequently less will reach the ground.

The sun's angle is more important to climate differences than the modest variation in Earth's distance to the sun, because the atmosphere is kept warm by the greenhouse effect. It's not the direct light that matters: Air is more or less transparent to the visible light that makes up most of the Sun's spectrum. Instead, the ground absorbs that light and reradiates it as infrared and microwave radiation. That longer-wavelength radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, but if the ground is not radiating as much infrared because it absorbed less sunlight, the atmosphere above it doesn't get warmed quite so much.

Granted, if the Earth's orbit were much more eccentric then the variation in distance to the Sun would matter more to climate variation. But it doesn't.

This would happen even if Earth's axis weren't tilted. Polar regions would still be cold and equatorial regions would still be hotter. In fact, the difference would be greater because there'd be less mixing.

Here's an image to show the difference:
^{Source: Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 3.0}

This site has another good image illustrating the difference (it's copyrighted so I won't embed it directly).

Polar regions are colder than equatorial ones for a simple reason - geometry.

More specifically, it is caused by the greater angle of the Sun's rays to the surface of the Earth. As you go farther north, the Earth's (mostly) spherical surface bends back from the direction of the Sun's rays, and the same amount of photons are spread over a larger area.

What's more, the closer you get to the poles, this already-attenuated sunlight has to go through more of the Earth's atmosphere, and so more sunlight is scattered, and consequently less will reach the ground.

The sun's angle is more important to climate differences than the modest variation in Earth's distance to the sun, because the atmosphere is kept warm by the greenhouse effect. It's not the direct light that matters: Air is more or less transparent to the visible light that makes up most of the Sun's spectrum. Instead, the ground absorbs that light and reradiates it's as infrared and microwave radiation. That longer-wavelength radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, but if the ground is not radiating as much infrared because it absorbed less sunlight, the atmosphere above it doesn't get warmed quite so much.

Granted, if the Earth's orbit were much more eccentric then the variation in distance to the Sun would matter more to climate variation. But it doesn't.

This would happen even if Earth's axis weren't tilted. Polar regions would still be cold and equatorial regions would still be hotter. In fact, the difference would be greater because there'd be less mixing.

This site has a good image illustrating the difference (it's copyrighted so I won't embed it directly).

Polar regions are colder than equatorial ones for a simple reason - geometry.

More specifically, it is caused by the greater angle of the Sun's rays to the surface of the Earth. As you go farther north, the Earth's (mostly) spherical surface bends back from the direction of the Sun's rays, and the same amount of photons are spread over a larger area.

What's more, the closer you get to the poles, this already-attenuated sunlight has to go through more of the Earth's atmosphere, and so more sunlight is scattered, and consequently less will reach the ground.

The sun's angle is more important to climate differences than the modest variation in Earth's distance to the sun, because the atmosphere is kept warm by the greenhouse effect. It's not the direct light that matters: Air is more or less transparent to the visible light that makes up most of the Sun's spectrum. Instead, the ground absorbs that light and reradiates it as infrared and microwave radiation. That longer-wavelength radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, but if the ground is not radiating as much infrared because it absorbed less sunlight, the atmosphere above it doesn't get warmed quite so much.

Granted, if the Earth's orbit were much more eccentric then the variation in distance to the Sun would matter more to climate variation. But it doesn't.

This would happen even if Earth's axis weren't tilted. Polar regions would still be cold and equatorial regions would still be hotter. In fact, the difference would be greater because there'd be less mixing.

This site has a good image illustrating the difference (it's copyrighted so I won't embed it directly).