Session ID: 12738
Session Title: GC030. Earth’s energy imbalance and energy flows through the climate system

Section/Focus Group: Global Environmental Change

Conveners:  Kevin Trenberth, Seiji Kato, Tristan L’Ecuyer, Karina von Schuckmann

The abstract submission site is now open. The deadline for all submissions is Wednesday, 3 August 23:59 EDT. Abstracts will not be accepted for review after this date.

Session description

Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) is the fundamental measure of climate. The goal of this session is to bring together experts from ocean and atmospheric reanalysis, air-sea fluxes, ocean heat content (OHC), climate models, atmospheric radiation and sea level to better synthesize all the information available on the energy flows through the climate system and inventories of where it resides.  This is a central topic under a CLIVAR research focus “CONCEPT-HEAT” “Consistency between planetary energy balance and ocean heat storage”.  Papers on fluxes of energy at top-of-atmosphere and the surface, and analyses of changes in storage of energy and its movement around are encouraged.   A major reservoir is the ocean and ways to improve OHC analyses and achieve closure of the energy budget over time are especially included.   Assessments of model and reanalyses performance, observational results, and insights on EEI from both global and regional “cage” studies are encouraged.