A round Earth for climate models.

ABSTRACT: Sunlight drives the Earth's weather, climate, chemistry, and biosphere. Recent efforts to improve solar heating codes in climate models focused on more accurate treatment of the absorption spectrum or fractional clouds. A mostly forgotten assumption in climate models is that of a flat Earth atmosphere. Spherical atmospheres intercept 2.5 W⋅m^-2 more sunlight and heat the climate by an additional 1.5 W⋅m^-2 globally. Such a systematic shift, being comparable to the radiative forcing change from preindustrial to present, is likely to produce a discernible climate shift that would alter a model's skill in simulating current climate. Regional heating errors, particularly at high latitudes, are several times larger. Unlike flat atmospheres, constituents in a spherical atmosp

SUBMITTER: Prather MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6765298 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature