Tracking earth’s energy: From El Niño to global warming

The state of knowledge and outstanding issues with respect to the global mean energy budget of planet Earth are described, along with the ability to track changes over time. Best estimates of the main energy components involved in radiative transfer and energy flows through the climate system do not satisfy physical constraints for conservation of energy without adjustments. The main issues relate to the downwelling longwave (LW) radiation and the hydrological cycle, and thus the surface evaporative cooling. It is argued that the discrepancy is 18% of the surface latent energy flux, but only 4% of the downwelling LW flux and, for various reasons, it is most likely that the latter is astray in some calculations, including many models, although there is also scope for precipitation estimates to be revised.