Description: The energy budgets over land and oceans are still afflicted with considerable uncertainties, despite their key importance for terrestrial and maritime climates. We evaluate these budgets as represented in 43 CMIP5 climate models with direct observations from both surface and space and identify substantial biases, particularly in the surface fluxes of downward solar and thermal radiation. These flux biases in the various models are then linearly related to their respective land and ocean means to infer best estimates for present day downward solar and thermal radiation over land and oceans. Over land, where most direct observations are available to constrain the surface fluxes, we obtain 184 and 306 Wm−2 for solar and thermal downward radiation, respectively. Over oceans, with weaker observational constraints, corresponding estimates are around 185 and 356 Wm−2. Considering additionally surface albedo and emissivity, we infer a surface absorbed solar and net thermal radiation of 136 and −66 Wm−2 over land, and 170 and −53 Wm−2 over oceans, respectively. The surface net radiation is thus estimated at 70 Wm−2 over land and 117 Wm−2 over oceans, which may impose additional constraints on the poorly known sensible/latent heat flux magnitudes, estimated here near 32/38 Wm−2 over land, and 16/100 Wm−2 over oceans. Estimated uncertainties are on the order of 10 and 5 Wm−2 for most surface and TOA fluxes, respectively. By combining these surface budgets with satellite-determined TOA budgets we quantify the atmospheric energy budgets as residuals (including ocean to land transports), and revisit the global mean energy balance.

Description: The energy budgets over land and oceans are key determinants of terrestrial and maritime climates. Traditionally, however, large uncertainties have been inherent in the estimates of these budgets, which is still reflected in largely differing energy budgets in the latest generation of global climate models (CMIP5). We combine a comprehensive set of radiation observations with 43 state-of-the-art global climate models from CMIP5 to infer best estimates for downward solar and thermal radiation averaged over land and ocean surfaces. Over land, where most direct observations are available to constrain the surface fluxes, we obtain 185 and 305 Wm-2 for the solar and thermal downward radiation, respectively. Over oceans, with weaker observational constraints, our best estimates are around 186 and 356 Wm-2 for the solar and thermal downward radiation. These values closely agree, mostly within 3 Wm-2, with the respective quantities independently derived by recent state-of-the-art reanalyses (ERA-Interim) and satellite-derived products (surface CERES EBAF). This remarkable consistency enhances confidence in the determined flux magnitudes, which so far caused large uncertainties in the energy budgets and often hampered an accurate simulation of surface climates in models. Considering additionally surface albedo and emission, we infer an absorbed solar and net thermal radiation over land of 138 and -67 Wm-2, and over ocean of 170 and -53 Wm-2, respectively. Best estimates for the surface net radiation thus amount to 71 Wm-2 over land and 117 Wm-2 over oceans, which may provide better constraints for the respective sensible and latent heat fluxes. Combining these surface budgets with satellite-determined TOA budgets (CERES-EBAF) results in an atmospheric solar absorption of 75 and 82 Wm-2 and a net atmospheric thermal emission of -165 and -190 Wm-2 over land and oceans, respectively.