The global heat balance: heat transports in the atmosphere and ocean

Trenberth, Kevin E.; Solomon, A. K.

doi:10.1007/bf00210625

Cited by 278 publications

(137 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…The mass of dry air in the atmosphere is essentially conserved and this acts as a constraint which can be exploited. In fact the global 6-hourly analyses do not conserve mass, and because transport of moisture and energy necessarily involve mass¯ows, it is essential to invoke this constraint to be able to make any sense of the budgets of these other quantities (Trenberth 1991, Trenberth and Solomon 1994. Moisture budgets can be checked to some extent through computations of the vertically integrated moisture tendencies and moisture divergence, which are balanced by evaporation E minus precipitation P (e.g., see Guillemot 1995, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A global atmospheric energy budget using ECMWF operational analyses was described in detail by Trenberth and Solomon (1994), and the general framework for such studies was spelled out more fully in Trenberth (1997). Trenberth (1998) reported on results from NCEP/NCAR reanalyses, especially insofar as they provided new estimates of poleward heat transport by the oceans, but it is only now that we are in a position to compare the results from the two centers and thereby provide an assessment of reproducibility and thus con®dence in the results.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are referred to as``derived¯uxes''. While many previous studies, reviewed in Trenberth and Solomon (1994), have performed zonal mean atmospheric heat budget computations, heat budgets have not been done locally or with consistent TOA radiation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The atmospheric energy budget and implications for surface fluxes and ocean heat transports

Trenberth¹,

Caron²,

Stepaniak³

2001

Climate Dynamics

207

163

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Comprehensive diagnostic comparisons and evaluations have been carried out with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) and European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalyses of the vertically integrated atmospheric energy budgets. For 1979 to 1993 the focus is on the monthly means of the divergence of the atmospheric energy transports. For February 1985 to April 1989, when there are reliable top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) radiation data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), the implied monthly mean surfacē uxes are derived and compared with those from the assimilating models and from the Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (COADS), both locally and zonally integrated, to deduce the implied ocean meridional heat transports.While broadscale aspects and some details of both the divergence of atmospheric energy and the surface¯ux climatological means are reproducible, especially in the zonal means, dierences are also readily apparent. Systematic dierences are typically $20 W m À2 . The evaluation highlights the poor results over land. Land imbalances indicate local errors in the divergence of the atmospheric energy transports for monthly means on scales of 500 km (T31) of 30 W m À2 in both reanalyses and $50 W m À2 in areas of high topography and over Antarctica for NCEP/NCAR. Over the oceans in the extratropics, the monthly mean anomaly time series of the vertically integrated total energy divergence from the two reanalyses correspond reasonably well, with correlations exceeding 0.7. A common monthly mean climate signal of about 40 W m À2 is inferred along with local errors of 25 to 30 W m À2 in most extratropical regions.Except for large scales, there is no useful common signal in the tropics, and reproducibility is especially poor in regions of active convection and where stratocumulus prevails. Although time series of monthly anomalies of surface bulk¯uxes from the two models and COADS agree very well over the northern extratropical oceans, the total ®elds all contain large systematic biases which make them unsuitable for determining ocean heat transports. TOA biases in absorbed shortwave, outgoing longwave and net radiation from both reanalysis models are substantial (>20 W m À2 in the tropics) and indicate that clouds are a primary source of problems in the model¯uxes, both at the surface and the TOA. Time series of monthly COADS surface¯uxes are shown to be unreliable south of about 20 N where there are fewer than 25 observations per 5 square per month. Only the derived surface¯uxes give reasonable implied meridional ocean heat transports.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The atmospheric energy budget and implications for surface fluxes and ocean heat transports

Trenberth¹,

Caron²,

Stepaniak³

2001

Climate Dynamics

207

163

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show abstract

“…hv dp ð3Þ is the atmospheric energy transport, g is acceleration due to gravity, p s is surface pressure, h is moist static energy (MSE), v is velocity and p is pressure (Trenberth and Solomon 1994). If we integrate Eq.…”

Section: Extratropical Warmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of extratropical warming on ENSO amplitudes in an ensemble of a coupled GCM

Yamazaki

2014

Clim Dyn

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The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) amplitudes in an ensemble of twentieth-century coupled general circulation model experiments performed for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 were found to have a systematic relationship with the timeaveraged Southern Ocean sea surface temperature (SST). That is, the ENSO amplitudes were greater in the ensemble members with warmer Southern Ocean SST. Here we propose a mechanism that explains how the anomalous extratropical warming remotely affects the ENSO strength. First, the reduction in the meridional temperature gradient over the Southern Hemisphere gives rise to an anomalous northward heat transport by transient eddies across the extratropics into the tropics. This induces an anomalous Hadley cell that leads to a northward heat transport within the tropics in its upper branch and a southward moisture transport in the lower branch. The latter reduces maximum precipitation in the intertropical convergence zone in the equatorial Pacific Ocean and increases precipitation in the adjacent region to the south. Since the amount of precipitation over the eastern equatorial Pacific dictates the strength of ENSO through the shift in the zonal wind stress response to El Niño/La Niña, we conclude that there is an energy transport pathway through which the ENSO strength can be remotely modulated by the anomalous heating in the extratropics.

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“…Following Li and Wettstein (2012) we use total column-integrated diabatic heating calculated directly from the monthly reanalyses products by summing the net shortwave and longwave radiative fluxes into the atmospheric column (top of atmosphere and surface fluxes), the surface vertical sensible heat flux, and the latent heat released by local precipitation [Eq. (5) in Trenberth and Solomon (1994)]. Because radiation data in NCEP reanalysis are only given since 1992, we also use data from the ERA-Interim, which starts in 1979.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Lagrangian Analysis of the Northern Hemisphere Subtropical Jet

Martius

2014

Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences

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The North Atlantic jet stream during winter 2010 was unusually zonal, so the typically separated Atlantic and African jets were merged into one zonal jet. Moreover, the latitude-height structure and temporal variability of the North Atlantic jet during this winter were more characteristic of the North Pacific. This work examines the possibility of a flow regime change from an eddy-driven to a mixed eddy-thermally driven jet. A monthly jet zonality index is defined, which shows that a persistent merged jet state has occurred in the past, both at the end of the 1960s and during a few sporadic months. The anomalously zonal jet is found to be associated with anomalous tropical Pacific diabatic heating and eddy anomalies similar to those found during a negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) state. A Lagrangian back-trajectory diagnosis of eight winters suggests the tropical Pacific is a source of momentum to the Atlantic and African jets and that this source was stronger during the winter of 2010. The results suggest that the combination of weak eddy variance and fluxes in the North Atlantic, along with strong tropical heating, act to push the jet toward a merged eddy-thermally driven state. The authors also find significant SST anomalies in the North Atlantic, which reinforce the anomalous zonal winds, particularly in the eastern Atlantic.

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The global heat balance: heat transports in the atmosphere and ocean

Cited by 278 publications

References 51 publications

The atmospheric energy budget and implications for surface fluxes and ocean heat transports

The atmospheric energy budget and implications for surface fluxes and ocean heat transports

Effects of extratropical warming on ENSO amplitudes in an ensemble of a coupled GCM

A Lagrangian Analysis of the Northern Hemisphere Subtropical Jet

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