Earth\u2019s changing global atmospheric energy cycle in response to climate change

Yefeng Pan,Xinyue Wang,Liming Li,Andrew P Ingersoll,Gan Li,Wentao Zhang,Xun Jiang

doi:10.1038/ncomms14367

Abstract

The Lorenz energy cycle is widely used to investigate atmospheres and climates on planets. However, the long-term temporal variations of such an energy cycle have not yet been explored. Here we use three independent meteorological data sets from the modern satellite era, to examine the temporal characteristics of the Lorenz energy cycle of Earth’s global atmosphere in response to climate change. The total mechanical energy of the global atmosphere basically remains constant with time, but the global-average eddy energies show significant positive trends. The spatial investigations suggest that these positive trends are concentrated in the Southern Hemisphere. Significant positive trends are also found in the conversion, generation and dissipation rates of energies. The positive trends in the dissipation rates of kinetic energies suggest that the efficiency of the global atmosphere as a heat engine increased during the modern satellite era.

Highlights

The Lorenz energy cycle is widely used to investigate atmospheres and climates on planets
We average the energy cycle over the 35-year time period to update the time-mean state of the Lorenz energy cycle (Supplementary Fig. 1), which is basically consistent with our previous results[9]
The inter-annual variabilities of the Lorenz energy cycle were discussed in our previous studiy[10], so we focus on the linear trends of the energy components in this study

Summary

Introduction

The Lorenz energy cycle is widely used to investigate atmospheres and climates on planets. We use three independent meteorological data sets from the modern satellite era, to examine the temporal characteristics of the Lorenz energy cycle of Earth’s global atmosphere in response to climate change. The positive trends in the dissipation rates of kinetic energies suggest that the efficiency of the global atmosphere as a heat engine increased during the modern satellite era. We examine the linear trends of the Lorenz energy cycle of the global atmosphere in the modern satellite era (1979–2013) with two satellite-based meteorological data sets (see Methods): the newest reanalysis from the National Centers of Environmental Prediction and the Department of Energy Reanalysis II (NCEP-DOE R2)[35,36,37] and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analysis Interim (ERA-Interim)[38,39,40]. The efficiency of Earth’s global atmosphere as a heat engine increased during the past 35 years (1979–2013)

Methods

Results

Conclusion