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 particular, pure radiative models (energy balance models, for instance) neglect the transfer of energy by non-radiative processes and are unable to model any of the other more nuanced the dynamical processes that govern both the climate and weather on Earth. A radiative model, for example, will be entirely silent on the question of whether or not increased greenhouse gas concentration is likely to change the behavior of ocean currents. Even if we were to devise an energy balance that is sophisticated enough to model radiative transfer between the ocean, land, and atmosphere as separate energy reservoirs, the inclusion of facts about currents is simply beyond the scope of these models.

To include facts like those, we need to appeal to a new class of models—so-called “radiative-convective” (RC) models are designed to address these issues. These models incorporate many of the same insights about radiation balance that we saw in the ZDEBM, but with the addition of dynamical considerations. Basic RC models will treat the planet not just as a set of “lamps” which absorb and emit radiation, but rather will include enough detail to model the transfer of energy via convection—the movement of air—as well. We can think of RC models as presenting the Earth as a set of connected boxes of various sizes containing gas of various temperatures. While some energy is transferred between the boxes as a result of radiative forcing, the boundaries where one box meets another are equally important—there, the contents of the two boxes mix, and energy transfer as a result of convection becomes possible as well. A simple one-dimensional RC model might treat the surface of the Earth as consisting of regions of different temperature arrayed along a line, calculating the interaction of different regions at their boundary by employing a fixed lapse-rate to model convective energy transfer. This information might then be incorporated into a relatively sophisticated energy balance 133