PICE Talk by Peter Lauritzen

Title: Reconciling and Improving Formulations for Thermodynamics and Conservation Principles in Earth System Models (ESMs)

Abstract: Earth System Models (ESMs) have numerous total energy budget errors. This article establishes the governing total energy equations for large-scale ESMs and assesses the energy budget errors in real-world simulations in a widely used climate model. To move towards a closed energy budget in ESMs, further research on total energy conserving discretizations (in the dynamical core), unified thermodynamics (through thermodynamic potentials/conserved variables) and missing processes is paramount. The energy budget errors will not improve with higher spatial resolution and may even get worse.