The flow of energy through the earth's climate system

Abstract

SUMMARYThe primary driver of the climate system is the uneven distribution of incoming and outgoing radiation on earth. The incoming radiant energy is transformed into various forms (internal heat, potential energy, latent energy, and kinetic energy), moved around in various ways primarily by the atmosphere and oceans, stored and sequestered in the ocean, land, and ice components of the climate system, and ultimately radiated back to space as infrared radiation. The requirement for an equilibrium climate mandates a balance between the incoming and outgoing radiation, and further mandates that the flows of energy are systematic. These drive the weather systems in the atmosphere, currents in the ocean, and fundamentally determine the climate. Values are provided for the seasonal uptake and release of heat by the oceans that substantially moderate the climate in maritime regions. In the atmosphere, the poleward transports are brought about mainly by large-scale overturning, including the Hadley circulation in low latitudes, and baroclinic storms in the extratropics, but the seamless nature of the transports on about monthly time-scales indicates a fundamental link between the two rather different mechanisms. The flows of energy can be perturbed, causing climate change. This article provides an overview of the flows of energy, its transformations, transports, uptake, storage and release, and the processes involved. The focus is on the region 60 • N to 60 • S, and results are presented for the solstitial seasons and their differences to highlight the annual cycle. Challenges in better determining the surface heat balance and its changes with time are discussed.

Future change of global monsoon in the CMIP5

“…Over the past decade, the Global Monsoon (GM) has been viewed as a global-scale, persistent atmospheric overturning that varies according to the time of year (Trenberth et al 2000;Trenberth and Stepaniak 2004). Wang and Ding (2008) defined the GM as the dominant mode of the annual variation of the tropical precipitation and low-level winds, which characterize the seasonality of Earth's climate.…”

Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and Attribution and Prediction of Climate: Progress since the Fourth Assessment

“…Through their fluid motions, their high heat capacity, and their ecosystems, the oceans play a central role in shaping the Earth's climate and its variability (as discussed by [3] and [4]). The most important characteristic of the oceans is that they are wet and, while obvious, this is sometimes overlooked.…”

Water in the Earth's atmosphere

“…Quite a large amount of water is stored for long times in the antartic and arctic ice sheets. The water cycle is intricately intertwined with many other global and regional environmental cycles [10], most prominently the global energy cycle ( [56,57]. Additional information on the overall global water cycle can be found in e.g.…”

“…As can be expected, the cloud cover is continuously high in the equatorial belt due to strong convection along the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). High cloud amounts also occur in the regions of the extratropical storm tracks along the polar fronts in mid-latitudes (50)(51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56)(57)(58)(59)(60) • ). Minima of cloudiness are observed in the zones of downward motion in the subtropics associated with the Hadley cells.…”