Empirical constraints on the fraction of surface latent heat flux reaching the top of atmosphere as net radiative cooling — code and figures

First public release of the analysis pipeline and figures for: Empirical constraints on the fraction of surface latent heat flux reaching the top of atmosphere as net radiative cooling.

What this release contains

• v5 figure builder (9 figures, titled and notitled variants)
• 341-site joint sample (FluxDataKit-v3 + JapanFlux2024, with ID-PaD dedup)
• Basin-scale CRE extraction for Amazon, Congo, SE Asia
• Atlantic-source Lagrangian trajectory control experiment
• CERES EBAF Ed4.2 and ERA5 CAPE coupling scripts

Conceptual pipeline

flowchart LR
    LE["Surface LE<br/>FLUXNET<br/>87.1 W/m²"] --> CLD["Cloud<br/>formation"]
    CLD --> SW["CRE_SW<br/>(reflected SW,<br/>cooling)"]
    CLD --> LW["CRE_LW<br/>(trapped LW,<br/>warming)"]
    SW --> NET["TOA CRE_net<br/>= CRE_SW + CRE_LW"]
    LW --> NET
    NET --> ETA["Transfer fraction<br/>η = |CRE_net| / LE<br/>median 31.6%"]

Headline numbers

| Quantity | Value | |----------|-------| | Global median η (all biomes, n = 341) | 31.6% [95% CI 28.3-35.8%] | | Tropical EBF median η (12 sites, 5 continents) | 14.7% | | Amazon basin η | 20.8% (CRE_net = -19.8 W/m², LE = 95.1 W/m²) | | Congo basin η / SE Asia basin η | 17.1% / 20.1% | | CRE_LW vs CAPE | R² = 0.74, n = 19 regions | | Atlantic-source trajectory control | +0.44 W/m² (n = 28, p = 0.83) |

Per-hectare dollar valuation is deferred to the companion cascade-valuation paper.

License

Code: MIT. Figures: CC BY 4.0.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/R3GENESI5/shahid-2026-transfer-fraction/commits/v1.0.0