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3 - Earth’s Energy Balance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2022

Kevin E. Trenberth
Affiliation:
National Center for Atmospheric Research
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Summary

The incoming energy to the Earth system is in the form of solar radiation and roughly corresponds to that of a black body at the temperature of the Sun of about 6000 K. The Sun’s emissions peak at a wavelength of about 0.6 μm and much of this energy is in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum although some extends beyond the red into the infrared and some extends beyond the violet into the ultraviolet (Fig. 4.5). As noted earlier, because of the very nearly spherical shape of Earth, at any time half of Earth is in night (Fig. 1.2) and the average amount of energy incident on a level surface outside the atmosphere is one-quarter of the total solar irradiance, or 340 W m−2. About 30% of this energy is scattered or reflected back to space by air molecules, tiny airborne particles (known as aerosols), clouds in the atmosphere, or by Earth’s surface, which leaves about 240 W m−2 on average to warm Earth’s surface and atmosphere (Fig. 3.1).

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

References and Further Reading

Kiehl, J. T., and Trenberth, K. E., 1997: Earth’s annual global mean energy budget. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78, 197208.Google Scholar
Lacis, A. A., Schmidt, G. A., Rind, D., and Ruedy, R. A, 2010: Atmospheric CO2: principal control knob governing Earth’s temperature. Science, 330, 356-359. www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/330/6002/356/DC1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmidt, G. A., Ruedy, R. A., Miller, R. L., and Lacis, A. A., 2010: Attribution of the present‐day total greenhouse effect. Journal of Geophysical Research, 115, D20106. doi: 10.1029/2010JD014287.Google Scholar
Trenberth, K. E. and Fasullo, J. T., 2011: Tracking Earth’s energy: from El Niño to global warming. Surveys in Geophysics, doi: 10.1007/s10712-011-9150-2.Google Scholar
Trenberth, K. E., Fasullo, J. T., and Kiehl, J., 2009: Earth’s global energy budget. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 90, 311324. doi: 10.1175/2008BAMS2634.1.Google Scholar
Wild, M., Folini, D., Hakuba, M. Z., et al., 2015: The energy balance over land and oceans: an assessment based on direct observations and CMIP5 climate models. Climate Dynamics, 44, 33933429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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