Earth's energy budget
Climate Change 2021 – The Physical Science Basis, Annex VII: Glossary, written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, states:
Earth’s energy budget encompasses the major energy flows of relevance for the climate system: the top-of-atmosphere energy budget; the surface energy budget; changes in the global energy inventory and internal flows of energy within the climate system that characterize the climate state.
- Top-of-atmosphere energy budget: Comprises the energy fluxes associated with incoming solar radiation, reflected solar radiation and emitted thermal radiation. Typical units: W m^–2.
- Surface energy budget: Comprises the exchanges of heat at the surface of the Earth associated with both radiative and non-radiative processes. Typical units: W m^–2.
- Global energy inventory: Quantifies the excess energy absorbed or lost by the Earth system (ocean, land, atmosphere and cryosphere), mostly in the form of heat, associated with radiative forcing of the climate. Typical units: Joules.
- Global energy budget: For a given time period, the global energy budget expresses the balance between change in the global energy inventory, the time-integrated effective radiative forcing and time-integrated radiative response of the climate system. Typical units: Joules.
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