Figure 1:   Climate and life are linked by a complex web of interconnected cycles. Life on earth depends on the cycling of nutrients through air, water, soil, and living things. The climate mediates the flow of materials through these global cycles. Solar energy degrades to heat at each stage of the cycling process and is eventually returned to space as infrared radiation. The composition of the earth's atmosphere regulates the radiative balance on earth between absorbed energy and emitted infrared energy, which, in turn, controls the climate.
Source: Schneider and Morton 1981.