Surface Energy Balance, Global Warming, Carbon Cycle and Water Cycle
Introduction
Our planet absorbs energy from the Sun.
While the overall energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere is small—meaning the incoming shortwave radiation is nearly equal to the sum of outgoing shortwave and longwave radiation—there is a slight imbalance at the Earth’s surface. This imbalance has been exacerbated over the past decades due to global surface warming. Scientists attribute this primarily to the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (\(CO_2\)), methane (\(CH_4\)), and water vapor (\(H_2O\)), among others.
Global Energy Balance
See this paper Stephens et al. (2012).
Land Surface Energy Balance
The land surface exhibits significantly greater complexity compared to the sea surface, driven by the impacts of anthropogenic activities (i.e., \(CO_2\) emission), the heterogeneity of vegetation and landscapes, and the intricate couplings within the soil-atmosphere system.