Illustration of nature’s climate feedback “circuit” (IMAGE)
Caption
(A) Illustration of Nature’s climate feedback “circuit”, (B) global mean surface energy balance in the climate mean state, and (C) perturbation surface energy balance in response to external energy perturbation ΔFext. In panel (A), the garnet, solid orange, and solid blue arrows represent the external energy input, amplified external energy input, and energy output from Earth's climate system, respectively. The top (blue) box represents the thermal radiative emissions of individual layers in an atmosphere-surface column, and the bottom (orange) box corresponds to the total climate feedback kernel, which equals the product of the energy gain kernel of temperature feedback (matrix on the right) and the non-temperature feedback kernel (matrix on the left). In panel (B), the garnet, orange, and blue arrows represent the climate mean total solar energy absorbed by the surface, the downward thermal energy emitted from the atmosphere, and the total energy output from the surface equal to the sum of surface thermal energy emission and surface sensible and latent heat fluxes, respectively. The numbers next to the arrows are their climate mean and global mean values. In panel (C), the mixed-color and blue arrows represent the total input energy and thermal emission perturbations at the surface, respectively. The strength of the total input energy perturbations equals the product of the input energy perturbation (ΔFext), temperature feedback kernel (G), and surface element of the non-temperature feedback kernel. The surface element of the non-temperature feedback kernel for the perturbed climate state is approximated to have the same value as the amplification of the total solar energy input at the surface in the climate mean state.
Credit
©Science China Press
Usage Restrictions
Use with credit.
License
Original content