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North American water and energy cycles
Author(s) -
Trenberth Kevin E.,
Fasullo John T.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/grl.50107
Subject(s) - snowmelt , environmental science , evapotranspiration , water cycle , precipitation , atmosphere (unit) , streamflow , climatology , energy budget , atmospheric sciences , evaporation , latent heat , flux (metallurgy) , snow , drainage basin , meteorology , geology , geography , ecology , physics , materials science , cartography , metallurgy , biology , thermodynamics
Closure of the water and energy cycles for North America has been improved by combining several new data sets to provide an integrated view from 1979 to 2010. We use new global atmospheric reanalyses, top‐of‐atmosphere radiation, surface fluxes including evaporation E and precipitation P , streamflow and river discharge, and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment estimates of water storage and its tendency. The atmospheric moisture budget provides more reliable estimates and reproducible time series of E‐P than separate estimates of E and P . The excess of P over E is greatest in winter largely because of changing evapotranspiration, whereas precipitation is largest in summer. The annual mean loss of energy to space of 33 W m ‐2 is compensated for nearly equally by transports of dry static energy and latent energy onto land. The annual cycle (amplitude of ~20 W m ‐2 ) of implied downward surface flux corresponds to changes in surface and soil temperatures and seasonal snowmelt.