Understanding Global Warming from the Perspective of Earth’s Energy Budget Estimation

  • Xuqian LI ,
  • Qingxiang LI
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  • 1.School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Key Laboratory of Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean System (Sun Yat-sen University), Ministry of Education, Guangzhou 510275, China
    2.Research Center for Ecology and Environment of Central Asia, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China
    3.Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai Guangdong 519082, China
LI Xuqian, research area includes Earth’s energy balance. E-mail: lixq223@mail2.sysu.edu.cn
LI Qingxiang, research area includes climate change research. E-mail: liqingx5@mail.sysu.edu.cn

Received date: 2024-11-18

  Revised date: 2024-12-04

  Online published: 2025-03-24

Supported by

the National Natural Science Foundation of China(42375022);The National Key Research and Development Program of China(2023YFC3008002)

Abstract

Tracking the Earth’s energy imbalance is one of the key methods for studying the contribution of human activities to climate change. Energy imbalance directly reflects the complex responses and feedback of the climate system and is an important indicator of climate change. However, accurately estimating the Earth’s energy budget has long been a challenge. Observations of the top of the atmosphere and surface radiative fluxes have high uncertainties, and it is difficult to validate different observation datasets. In addition, these high uncertainties lead to inaccurate estimates of changes in Earth’s energy budget fluxes. Furthermore, estimating surface radiative fluxes is challenging because of the lack of high-quality, high-resolution observational data. Recently, methods using ocean heat content/sea-level height data for the indirect estimation of the Earth’s energy budget have been widely applied. Considering that most of the energy imbalance flows into the ocean heat content, ocean data observations can yield estimates of the Earth’s energy imbalance with lower uncertainty. Additionally, reasonable estimates of the Earth’s energy budget can be obtained through multi-model ensemble methods using Earth system model outputs, supplemented with appropriate weighting strategies. By improving data integration capabilities and developing related technologies, climate scientists continuously enhance their understanding of the Earth’s energy budget, providing more precise scientific evidence for understanding and addressing increasingly severe global warming.

Cite this article

Xuqian LI , Qingxiang LI . Understanding Global Warming from the Perspective of Earth’s Energy Budget Estimation[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2025 , 40(1) : 57 -67 . DOI: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2025.006

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