Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 10.22
Schematic illustration of processes commonly included in AGCMs and their interactions.
The thickness of each arrow gives a rough indication of the importance of the interaction
that the particular arrow represents. (After Simmons and Bengtsson, 1984.)
influence of large-scale air-sea interactions on climate it is important to run coupled
atmosphere-ocean GCMs in which the sea surface temperature is predicted. At
present, however, most AGCMs use externally specified monthly or seasonal mean
sea surface temperatures. Over land, however, the surface temperature adjusts very
quickly to changes in the fluxes of solar and infrared radiation and is determined
from a surface energy-balance equation.
Atmospheric radiative heating by solar radiation and heating and cooling by
long-wave thermal radiation are computed using radiative transfer models of
varying sophistication. Zonally averaged distributions of radiatively important
