Earth's Global Energy Budget

Abstract

An update is provided on the Earth's global annual mean energy budget in the light of new observations and analyses. In 1997, Kiehl and Trenberth provided a review of past estimates and performed a number of radiative computations to better establish the role of clouds and various greenhouse gases in the overall radiative energy flows, with top-of-atmosphere (TOA) values constrained by Earth Radiation Budget Experiment values from 1985 to 1989, when the TOA values were approximately in balance. The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) measurements from March 2000 to May 2004 are used at TOA but adjusted to an estimated imbalance from the enhanced greenhouse effect of 0.9 W m−2. Revised estimates of surface turbulent fluxes are made based on various sources. The partitioning of solar radiation in the atmosphere is based in part on the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) FD computations that utilize the global ISCCP cloud data every 3 h, and also accounts for increased atmospheric absorption by water vapor and aerosols. Surface upward longwave radiation is adjusted to account for spatial and temporal variability. A lack of closure in the energy balance at the surface is accommodated by making modest changes to surface fluxes, with the downward longwave radiation as the main residual to ensure a balance. Values are also presented for the land and ocean domains that include a net transport of energy from ocean to land of 2.2 petawatts (PW) of which 3.2 PW is from moisture (latent energy) transport, while net dry static energy transport is from land to ocean. Evaluations of atmospheric reanalyses reveal substantial biases.