@article{d511ad0ab09941cf8e1a1e736ff3bc13,
title = "The Curious Nature of the Hemispheric Symmetry of the Earth{\textquoteright}s Water and Energy Balances",
abstract = "This paper presents new estimates of the hemispheric energy balance based on an assembly of radiative flux and ocean heat data. Further, it provides an overview of recent simulations with fully coupled climate models to investigate the role of its representation in causing tropical precipitation biases. The energy balance portrayed here features a small hemispheric imbalance with slightly more energy being absorbed by the Southern hemisphere. This yields a net transport of heat towards the NH composing of a northward cross-equatorial heat transport by the oceans and a southward heat flow in the atmosphere. The turbulent fluxes and hemispheric precipitation balance to about 3 Wm−2 with slightly larger total accumulation occurring in the NH. CloudSat data indicate more frequent precipitation in the SH implying more intense precipitation in the NH. Fully coupled climate model simulations show that reducing hemispheric energy balance biases does little to reduce existing biases in tropical precipitation.",
keywords = "Cross-equatorial heat transport, Fully coupled climate model, Hemispheric energy balance, Ocean heat storage, Surface heat budget, Tropical precipitation bias",
author = "Stephens, {Graeme L.} and Hakuba, {Maria Z.} and Matt Hawcroft and Haywood, {Jim M.} and Ali Behrangi and Kay, {Jennifer E.} and Webster, {Peter J.}",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgments Many different sources of data were used in this study. We gratefully acknowledge the help of Seiji Kato for access to the latest version of CERES EBAF data. We thank Doris Folini, Urs Beyerle, and Thierry Corti for their efforts in post-processing and downloading the CMIP5 data. Furthermore, we thank Veronica Nieves, Dimitris Menemenlis, Carmen Boening, and Tong Lee for providing the ocean datasets and useful discussions. Andy Jones is thanked for providing additional analyses. This work was supported under NASA Grants NNN13D984T and NNN12AA01C. MH and JMH were supported by the Natural Environment Research Council/Department for International Development via the Future Climates for Africa (FCFA) funded project Improving Model Processes for African Climate (IMPALA, NE/ M017265/1). JMH was supported by the Joint UK DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Program (GA01101). JEK was supported by start-up funds awarded to her by the University of Colorado and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016, Springer International Publishing AG.",
year = "2016",
month = dec,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1007/s40641-016-0043-9",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "2",
pages = "135--147",
journal = "Current Climate Change Reports",
issn = "2198-6061",
publisher = "Springer International Publishing AG",
number = "4",
}