title: Earth's changing global atmospheric energy cycle in response to climate change.
abstract: The Lorenz energy cycle is widely used to investigate atmospheres and climates on planets. However, the long-term temporal variations of such an energy cycle have not yet been explored. Here we use three independent meteorological data sets from the modern satellite era, to examine the temporal characteristics of the Lorenz energy cycle of Earth's global atmosphere in response to climate change. The total mechanical energy of the global atmosphere basically remains constant with time, but the global-average eddy energies show significant positive trends. The spatial investigations suggest that these positive trends are concentrated in the Southern Hemisphere. Significant positive trends are also found in the conversion, generation and dissipation rates of energies. The positive trends in the dissipation rates of kinetic energies suggest that the efficiency of the global atmosphere as a heat engine increased during the modern satellite era.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Houston, 4800 Calhoun Road, Houston, Texas 77204, USA.
authors.forename: Yefeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Houston, 4800 Calhoun Road, Houston, Texas 77204, USA.
authors.forename: Liming
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204, USA.
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: School of Electronic Engineering and automation, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, Guangxi 541000.
authors.forename: Gan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Electronic Engineering and automation, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, Guangxi 541000.
authors.forename: Wentao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of information Technology, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, Guangxi 541000, China.
authors.forename: Xinyue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Caltech, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Ingersoll