Radiation Budget of the Southern Hemisphere

Abstract

The earth as a planet receives virtually all of its energy from solar radiation. The incoming solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere is approximately 2.00 calories per minute through a 1-cm2 surface perpendicular to the solar beam when the earth is at mean distance from the sun (Johnson, 1954).4 The heating of the earth, however, is not uniform, primarily due to its spherical shape. Geographic variation of the earth's albedo and the nonuniform absorptivity of the earth's surface produce further modifications to the heating distribution. This horizontal differential heating is a potential source of energy to drive the circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean which transports heat from equatorial to polar regions and eventually adjusts the earth-atmosphere system toward an energy balance between the heating by insolation and the cooling by emission of terrestrial radiation. The manner in which radiative processes interact with the general circulation of the atmosphere has been investigated in a number of recent numerical studies (see, for instance, Manabe et al., 1965; Mintz, 1968; Manabe, 1969; Sellers, 1969; Washington and Kasahara, 1970; Kasahara and Washington, 1971) where the computed mean distribution of the radiation fluxes is usually specified. Most of these studies are based on radiation calculations developed from Northern Hemisphere climatology, although some applications to the Southern Hemisphere make use of the results of Gabites (1950).

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• University of Colorado Boulder US
• NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research US

Related Publications