© 2002 Eugene S. Takle
Wallace and Hobbs (1977) give calculations of energy fluxes at the earth's surface in addition to those in balance with solar and infrared radiation, latent release and turbulent conduction of energy. They estimate human heat release due to burning of fossil fuels and dissipation of heat from nuclear reactors to be about 1 Wm-2. The rate of release of geothermal energy from the earth's interior is about 0.06 Wm-2. Variations in heat released from the global oceans can cause imbalances in average fluxes from year to year, but averaged over many decades these are estimated to be only a few tenths of watts per square meter. Finally, phase changes due to slow changes in ice masses could contribute about 0.6 Wm-2. These estimates will be important for comparison to heating introduced by enhanced atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases discussed in Unit 1-12, where we will see that greenhouse gas radiative forcing is larger than these values.
Wallace, J. M., and P. V. Hobbs, 1997: Atmospheric Science An Introductory
Survey. Academic Press. New York. 467pp.