Energy balance model

Summary

An energy balance model is a climate model that tracks only the surface temperature. It balances absorbed sunlight against emitted infrared radiation and, in models with latitude, the transport of heat toward the poles. In the zero-dimensional version the whole Earth has one temperature, and the model is an ordinary differential equation. In one-dimensional versions the temperature depends on latitude, and the model is a reaction-diffusion equation. These models are simple enough to analyse completely and show basic mechanisms such as climate sensitivity and the ice-albedo feedback.