Heating and Kinetic Energy Dissipation in the NCAR Community Atmosphere Model

Conservation of energy and the incorporation of parameterized heating in an atmospheric model are discussed. Energy conservation is used to unify the treatment of heating and kinetic energy dissipation within the Community Atmosphere Model, version 2 (CAM2). Dry static energy is predicted within the individual physical parameterizations and updated following each parameterization. Hydrostatic balance leads to an efficient method for determining the temperature and geopotential from the updated dry static energy. A consistent formulation for the heating due to kinetic energy dissipation associated with the vertical diffusion of momentum is also derived. Both continuous and discrete forms are presented. Tests of the new formulation verify that the impact on the simulated climate is very small.