ABSTRACT
The total energy budget of an earth/atmosphere column can be expressed as the sum of two separate budgets, one for the interface between the earth and its atmosphere, and one for the atmosphere alone. Different authorities have employed several different notations to represent these energy systems. Budget diagrams displayed in basic textbooks of climatology can be misleading unless it is clearly understood that they represent long-term mean situations around the globe as a whole. Actual energy and radiation budgets differ and vary almost infinitely from place to place and from time to time. The energy balance between the sun, the earth, and the earth’s atmosphere is the outstanding feature of one of the largest thermodynamic systems which man is called upon to study’. The details of this balance, long obscured by inadequate data, are being elucidated through measurements from weather satellites.
