Basics of the atmospheric energetics : A brief summary of global and regional atmospheric energetics reflected upon the university curricula

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the science and development of atmospheric energetics, its so far matured parts to date, and the direction of the researches. However, we restrict ourselves to the discussion of the very basic results of the researches to reveal the parts the introduction of which can be suggested into the compulsory education of the future meteorologist. This became feasible especially due to the rapid development of the personal computer that makes possible the calculation of the atmospheric energies for students by using their own laptops, so this field of meteorology now can be a tactile reality for them. The founder of atmospheric energetics was Lorenz, who formulated for a global, dry atmosphere the concept of available potential energy, which is the difference between the current energy state of the atmosphere and a reference state with minimum energy. His basic results concerning the global description of atmospheric energetics have already become part of the university curriculum. It is important to be able to describe the energy balance of the atmosphere both locally as well as globally, for which the introduction of enthalpy and exergy seemed appropriate. The advantage of examining the dry atmosphere is that significant simplifications can be applied, but the atmosphere is finally moist, so research has also started in this direction, first with a global and then with a local approach. The key is to find the reference state, which is a complex, computationally demanding task. In this paper, we focus on the most important steps of this process and concentrate on the thermodynamic basis of the new concepts.