The Mechanical Energies of the Global Atmosphere in El Niño and La Niña Years

Abstract

Two meteorological reanalysis datasets are analyzed to determine the mechanical energies of the global atmosphere in the El Niñ o and La Niñ a years. The general consistency of the mean energy components between the two datasets reveals ;1%-3% increase and ;2%-3% decrease in the mean energies in the El Niñ o years and La Niñ a years, respectively. These analyses further reveal that the tropospheric temperature responds to the sea surface temperature anomaly with a time lag of two months, which leads to the varying mean atmospheric energies in the El Niñ o and La Niñ a years.

Earth’s changing global atmospheric energy cycle in response to climate change

“…The time series of mechanical energies of the global atmosphere display not only the long-term linear trends but also some inter-annual variabilities (for example, El Niño–Southern Oscillation signals). The inter-annual variabilities of the Lorenz energy cycle were discussed in our previous studiy 10 , so we focus on the linear trends of the energy components in this study. The linear trends of these energies are computed using the least-square method 43 and the corresponding confidence levels (that is, the probabilities of linear trends with a non-zero slope) are estimated by the Student's t -statistics (see Methods).…”

“…Lorenz provided the first modern picture of the mechanical energies and their conversions for the global atmosphere 1 , which is called the Lorenz energy cycle. Such an energy cycle can help diagnose the atmospheric dynamics and general circulation, which is widely used in the studies of the atmospheres of Earth 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 and other planets 15 16 17 . Furthermore, the basic idea of atmospheric energies suggested by Lorenz 1 was extended to other energy concepts 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 and applied to the studies of hydrological cycle, climate change and alternative energy sources 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 .…”

“…The formulation of the energy cycle in a mixed space–time domain, which was developed by Oort 19 , and Peixoto and Oort 5 from Lorenz's theoretical frame 1 , is widely used in the current analyses of the energy components of atmospheres 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 . Here we follow the classical formulation 5 to calculate the following energies in the energy cycle: the mean available potential energy P M , the eddy available potential energy P E , the mean kinetic energy K M and the eddy kinetic energy K E .…”

Variations in atmospheric perturbation potential energy associated with the South China Sea summer monsoon

“…Although Margules (1910) was the first to propose the theory of atmospheric energy availability, it was Lorenz (1955) who provided the modern framework for atmospheric energetics, and the concept of APE became widely accepted and applied to the global atmospheric and oceanic energy budget (Oort 1964(Oort , 1971Peixóto and Oort 1974;Oort et al 1989;Li et al 2007Li et al , 2011Kim and Kim 2013;Roullet et al 2014;Pan et al 2017). As it is based on the global average, the APE cannot be used to diagnose regional atmospheric energetics, although several studies have tried to expand the APE to the local scale by incorporating the energy flux at the boundary of the chosen study region adding the boundary energetics fluxes (Smith 1969;Johnson 1970;Smith et al 1977;Edmon Jr 1978).…”

The oscillation of the perturbation potential energy between the extratropics and tropics in boreal winter

“…In order to study local energy efficiency, there has been much work on extending APE theory to the local scale (Oort, ; Smith, , ; Johnson, ; Edmon, ; Gu, ; Hu et al , ; Li et al , ; Li et al , ), however there are limitations. The definition of the reference state in APE theory is very important, but in previous studies it is empirical and dependent on the object of the study (Gao et al , ; Gao and Li, ).…”