in the form of latent heat. These processes buffer the surface conditions against some of the rapid radiative changes in the atmosphere. As a result, the daytime versus nighttime difference in surface temperatures is relatively small. Likewise, Earth's climate system as a whole shows a slow response to shifts in the atmospheric radiation balance. The top few meters of Earth's oceans harbor more thermal energy than its entire atmosphere. Like atmospheric gases, fluidic ocean waters transport vast amounts of such energy over the planet's surface. Sensible heat also moves into and out of great depths under conditions that favor downwelling or upwelling. Over 90 percent of the extra energy that has accumulated on Earth from ongoing global warming since 1970 has been stored in the ocean. About one-third has propagated to depths below 700 meters. The overall rate of growth has also risen during recent decades, reaching close to 500 TW (1 W/m2) as of 2020. That led to about 14 zettajoules (ZJ) of heat gain for the year, exceeding the 570 exajoules (=160,000 TW-hr) of total primary energy consumed by humans by a factor of at least 20. Heating/cooling rate analysis Generally speaking, changes to Earth's energy flux balance can be thought of as being the result of external forcings (both natural and anthropogenic, radiative and non-radiative), system feedbacks, and internal system variability. Such changes are primarily expressed as observable shifts in temperature (T), clouds (C), water vapor (W), aerosols (A), trace greenhouse gases (G), land/ocean/ice surface reflectance (S), and as minor shifts in insolaton (I) among other possible factors. Earth's heating/cooling rate can then be analyzed over selected timeframes (Δt) as the net change in energy (ΔE) associated with these attributes: Here the term ΔET is negative-valued when temperature rises due to the strong direct influence on OLR. The recent increase in trace greenhouse gases produces an enhanced greenhouse effect, and thus a positive ΔEG forcing term. By contrast, a large volcanic eruption (e.g. Mount Pinatubo 1991, El Chichón 1982) can inject sulfur-containing compounds into the upper atmosphere. High concentrations of stratospheric sulfur aerosols may persist for up to a few years, yielding a negative forcing contribution to ΔEA. Various other types of anthropogenic aerosol emissions make both positive and negative contributions to ΔEA. Solar cycles produce ΔEI smaller in magnitude than those of recent ΔEG trends from human activity. Climate forcings are complex since they can produce