The various global temperatures that may be theoretically conceived for any planet in general can be computed. Such temperatures include the planetary equilibrium temperature, equivalent blackbody temperature or effective radiation emission temperature of the planet. For a planet with an atmosphere, these temperatures can be different than the mean surface temperature, which may be measured as the global-mean surface air temperature, or as the global-mean surface skin temperature.
A radiative equilibrium temperature is calculated for the case that the supply of energy from within the planet (for example, from chemical or nuclear sources) is negligibly small; this assumption is reasonable for Earth, but fails, for example, for calculating the temperature of Jupiter, for which internal energy sources are larger than the incident solar radiation, and hence the actual temperature is higher than the theoretical radiative equilibrium.