Radiation Budget

The radiation budget represents the balance between incoming energy from the Sun and outgoing thermal (longwave) and reflected (shortwave) energy from the Earth. The "budget" is an analogy between conservation of energy and household budgeting.Globally, the budget is balanced: what is coming in is "spent" (otherwise the temperature would rise constantly). Locally, the budget is not balanced: tropical areas earn more than they spend, while at higher latitudes of the winter hemisphere more is spent than earned. The budgets are balanced by energy transfers in currents of ocean and atmosphere. For the transfers, radiation energy is transformed to latent heat, heat or even motion (kinetic energy), but in the end, it all becomes thermal energy and radiates off the Earth-Atmosphere system.
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