Understanding variations in downwelling longwave radiation using Brutsaert's equation

Tian, Yinglin; Zhong, Deyu; Ghausi, Sarosh Alam; Wang, Guangqian; Kleidon, Axel

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1363-2023

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1363-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1363-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

Research article

|

22 Dec 2023

Research article |

| 22 Dec 2023

Understanding variations in downwelling longwave radiation using Brutsaert's equation

Yinglin Tian, Deyu Zhong, Sarosh Alam Ghausi, Guangqian Wang, and Axel Kleidon

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1363-2023-supplement

Data sets

FLUXNET2015 Dataset: CC-BY-4.0 FLUXNET2015 cummunity https://fluxnet.org/data/download-data/

CERES and GEO-Enhanced TOA, Within-Atmosphere and Surface Fluxes NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/TERRA+AQUA/CERES/SYN1DEGMONTH_L3.004A

ERA5 monthly averaged data on single levels from 1940 to present Hersbach, H., et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.f17050d7

NOAA PSL CPC Global Unified Temperature https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.cpc.globaltemp.html

NOAA PSL CPC Global Unified Gauge-Based Analysis of Daily Precipitation https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.cpc.globalprecip.html

Download

Article (8286 KB)
Full-text XML

Short summary

Downward longwave radiation (R_ld) is critical for the surface energy budget, but its climatological variation on a global scale is not yet well understood physically. We use a semi-empirical equation derived by Brutsaert (1975) to identify the controlling role that atmospheric heat storage plays in spatiotemporal variations of R_ld. Our work helps us to better understand aspects of climate variability, extreme events, and global warming by linking these to the mechanistic contributions of R_ld.