Does the land area or water area of Earth's surface absorb more solar energy?

Answer 1

Short Answer:

Since there is so much more water than land, one expects that most of the solar energy absorbed by Earth is absorbed into the oceans. That is correct.

Crudely, twice as much energy is absorbed by the oceans as the land since there is roughly a bit more than twice as much ocean as land.

More Technical (Albedo):

The characterization of how much solar energy is absorbed by a portion of the surface of the Earth is something called the albedo of the surface. Some surfaces, like dirt, forests and the ocean absorb most of the Sun's energy. Others, like Snow reflect most of it. Deserts are in between.

The albedo of a surface is the fraction of light it reflects. (The term "reflects" does not mean like a mirror but rather means scatters or causes to light bounce back to distinguish "reflection" from the process where light is absorbed.) Normally, one refers to sunlight when quoting an albedo, but if a different or specific wavelength range is being considered, there are different values of the albedo that are defined for different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

On average, the ocean surface has a low albedo meaning it absorbs most of the light that gets to it.

The same is true for bare soil and most forests.

Though the albedo is variable, 70 or 80 % of the light is absorbed.

Desert areas typically have high albedos and can reflect most of the light.

Most land areas are in an albedo range of 0.1 to 0.4, so 90% to 60% of the light is absorbed.

The average albedo of the Earth is about 0.3, somewhat higher than typical of oceans or much of the land area primarily because of the contribution of clouds.

Clouds reflect light very effectively, absorbing little.