Abstract
<jats:p>The energetic framework of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) relates shifts of the annual-mean ITCZ latitude to changes in atmospheric energy transport (AET), but its applicability to seasonal variations of the ITCZ latitude remains unclear. Part of the problem is that energy fluxes in reanalyses are sensitive to both the dataset used and to methodological choices made during their computation. Using five reanalysis products and four computational methods, we investigate standard diagnostics of the energetic framework across the seasonal cycle averaged over the satellite era. Metrics of tropical AET, including the energy-flux equator (EFE), cross-equatorial energy flux, and equatorial net atmospheric energy input, are robustly correlated with ITCZ latitude over the seasonal cycle as the framework predicts. However, the spread in these quantities across products and methods is very large, yielding pronounced uncertainty that limits the framework's quantitative utility. Despite this uncertainty, some conflicts between observations and expectations from the framework appear robust: the ITCZ lags the energetic quantities by about 1 month throughout their annual cycles, and a well-known linearization of AET near the equator appears insufficient to quantitatively approximate the EFE latitude. Additionally, the ITCZ and EFE become decoupled, in contradiction to the energetic framework, during boreal winter, when a shallow circulation modifies the height of the cross-equatorial Hadley cell's upper branch. The energetic framework thus falls short of a full explanation of the observed seasonal cycle of the ITCZ, even in the zonal-mean context.</jats:p>