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Cited by 391

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 52 of the 52 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Earth’s Energy Imbalance

Open access
Trenberth, Kevin E., Fasullo, John T., Balmaseda, Magdalena A.·2014·Journal of Climate

Abstract

Climate change from increased greenhouse gases arises from a global energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). TOA measurements of radiation from space can track changes over time but lack absolute accuracy. An inventory of energy storage changes shows that over 90% of the imbalance is manifested as a rise in ocean heat content (OHC). Data from the Ocean Reanalysis System, version 4 (ORAS4), and other OHC-estimated rates of change are used to compare with model-based estimates of TOA energy imbalance [from the Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4)] and with TOA satellite measurements for the year 2000 onward. Most ocean-only OHC analyses extend to only 700-m depth, have large discrepancies among the rates of change of OHC, and do not resolve interannual variability adequately to capture ENSO and volcanic eruption effects, all aspects that are improved with assimilation of multivariate data. ORAS4 rates of change of OHC quantitatively agree with the radiative forcing estimates of impacts of the three major volcanic eruptions since 1960 (Mt. Agung, 1963; El Chichón, 1982; and Mt. Pinatubo, 1991). The natural variability of the energy imbalance is substantial from month to month, associated with cloud and weather variations, and interannually mainly associated with ENSO, while the sun affects 15% of the climate change signal on decadal time scales. All estimates (OHC and TOA) show that over the past decade the energy imbalance ranges between about 0.5 and 1 W m−2. By using the full-depth ocean, there is a better overall accounting for energy, but discrepancies remain at interannual time scales between OHC- and TOA-based estimates, notably in 2008/09.

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Metadata

Authors
Trenberth, K. E., Fasullo, J. T., & Balmaseda, M. A.
Venue
Journal of Climate
Published
2014-04-23
Volume
27
Issue
9
Pages
3129-3144
ISSN
  • 0894-8755 (ISSN-L)
  • 1520-0442
OpenAlex
W2136736608
Cited by
391
References
52
FWCI
28.76
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
hybrid

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Earth’s Energy Imbalance. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1175/jcli-d-13-00294.1
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Trenberth, K. E., Fasullo, J. T., & Balmaseda, M. A. (2014). Earth’s Energy Imbalance. Journal of Climate. https://doi.org/10.1175/jcli-d-13-00294.1

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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