Figure 3: Regional atmospheric energy budget for southern Africa.
From: Local biomass burning is a dominant cause of the observed precipitation reduction in southern Africa
Atmospheric energy budget over the June to September season and averaged over the subregion (shown by the dashed rectangle in Fig. 1) for different models and experiments. Results are shown as differences from the BASE simulation, where CESM denotes the global climate model and WRF the regional model. At top-of-atmosphere (TOA) and surface (SFC), net downward energy fluxes have positive values. The energy budget of the atmosphere (ATM) is defined as the difference between the energy balance at TOA and SFC, except for the horizontal transport terms (Hdry and Hmoist), which are positive when net energy transport is into the atmospheric column from the outside. Direction of brown and blue arrows on the right-hand-side of each plot denotes contribution towards decreased or increased surface precipitation according to equation 1 (−LδP=δSW+δLW+δSH+δHdry=−δLH−δHmoist), and the total change in precipitation in each experiment is indicated by a black line embedded on these arrows. Error bars show the 95% confidence interval derived from a two-tailed Student’s t-test.
