Abstract The temperature increase of the system Earth-atmosphere can be described by means of a parallelism between the leaking bucket’s dynamics and the energy balance between the incoming radiant power from the Sun and the outcoming net heat flow rate to outer space. The analogy is interesting from a didactical point of view, since the stable fixed point of the temperature can be related to the height of the water inside the leaking bucket in the presence of a fixed fluid flow rate. Qualitative predictions of global temperature increase for increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be obtained by reducing the outcoming net heat flow rate, using buckets with smaller orifices.