Monday, 24 March 2003: 1:30 PM
Heat budgets and poleward atmospheric energy transports
A detailed heat budget has been constructed for the subtropics of the
Southern Hemisphere which details the fluxes through the surface,
top-of-atmosphere, and within the atmosphere to determine how the cooling
that drives the downward branch of the Hadley circulation comes about. It is
widely assumed that the primary heat balance in the subsiding branch of the
Hadley circulation is between the adiabatic warming from subsidence and the
diabatic effects of infrared radiative cooling to space but this is shown to
be incorrect. We show that the cooling in the subtropics also arises from
heat transport to higher latitudes by quasi-horizontal air flow in the
transient baroclinic eddies. Similarly results apply in the Northern
Hemisphere except stationary waves also play a role in winter. Effectively,
the radiation to space is distributed over middle and high latitudes and is
not limited to the clear dry regions in the subtropics. Further we argue that
some of the radiative cooling in the subtropics is a consequence of the
transient baroclinic eddies. Results have implications for theories of the
Hadley circulation and water vapor feedback in the climate system.
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