Energy Balance Climate Models

Chapter 8Two Horizontal Dimensions and Seasonality

In this chapter, we consider climate models with a latitude and longitude dependence. This suggests that we find an appropriate basis set for expansions on the sphere. The basis set most often used in this kind of application is the set of spherical harmonics, which are derived in Section 8.3.

8.1 Beach Ball Seasonal Cycle

The Beach Ball Model¹ (North and Coakley, 1979), referred to as BBM, is an intermediate model that falls between one- and two-dimensional energy balance models (EBMs). In this section, we sketch a summary of results of the BBM as a kind of bridge to the full two-dimensional models that will follow. This chapter suggests that extending the EBCM to two horizontal dimensions ...