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14 - Earth’s Energy Imbalance Estimates

from Flows of Energy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2022

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

Global Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) is a fundamental metric of climate change, and the local distribution of the imbalance has implications for regional climate variations. It has been a major challenge to rein in the uncertainties and reasonably establish the EEI. Previous chapters have exploited the local energy imbalance estimates to examine resulting heat transports and anomalies, and teleconnections. The atmosphere and oceans are dynamically active, and many phenomena attempt to move heat to where it can best be either lost in some sense, such as by radiation to space, or perhaps sequestered by being buried deep in the ocean. Although there is somewhat constrained effectiveness in many phenomena, such as hurricanes or ENSO, in redistributing heat and keeping regions cooler than they otherwise would be, these aspects are often not replicated well in climate models. Hence it is vital to understand the net heat gain, and how much and where heat is distributed within the Earth system. How much heat might be readily purged and serve as a negative feedback to warming?

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

References and Further Reading

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Cheng, L., Trenberth, K., Fasullo, J., Boyer, T., Abraham, J., and Zhu, J., 2017: Improved estimates of ocean heat content from 1960–2015. Science Advances, 3(3), e1601545. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1601545. http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/3/e1601545.Google Scholar
Cheng, L., Abraham, J., Hausfather, Z., and Trenberth, K. E., 2019: How fast are the oceans warming? Observational records of ocean heat content show that ocean warming is accelerating. Science, 363, 128129. doi:10.1126/science.aav7619.Google Scholar
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Trenberth, K. E., Fasullo, J. T., and Balmaseda, M. A., 2014: Earth’s energy imbalance. Journal of Climate, 27, 31293144. doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trenberth, K. E., Fasullo, J. T., von Schuckmann, K., and Cheng, L., 2016: Insights into Earth’s energy imbalance from multiple sources. Journal of Climate, 29, 74957505. doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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