Dissipative heating in climate models

The various strategies towards dissipative heating in meteorological models are reviewed. The strategies are implicit formulations, explicit formulations, and exclusion. A thermodynamic formulation based on dry static energy, which has long been used in hydrostatic models, implicitly includes dissipative heating. Many modem non-hydrostatic mesoscale models, being based on potential temperature, do not include any dissipative heating. The National Center for Atmospheric Research community climate model (CCM3) explicitly formulates the dissipative heating for the resolved motion, which is based upon potential temperature, but, uses the implicit formulation for the sub-grid motion. Those who want to use the mesoscale-model formulation as a cloud-resolving climate model are advised to consider the effect of dissipative heating. We shaw a dry radiative-convective model, formulated without dissipative heating, in which climate equilibrium occurs with a net inward radiative flux of about 18 W m(-2) at the top of the atmosphere, and a surface temperature that is 8 K too low.