The latent heat of a substance is the energy it absorbs when it changes state without changing temperature — melting, or evaporating — and gives back when it changes back. For water evaporating at it is about per kilogram. In the energy budget, the latent heat flux is the energy that evaporation takes from the surface and that the water vapour releases in the air where it condenses into clouds. The sensible heat flux is the energy that the surface passes to the air in contact with it, warming it, and that rising air carries upwards.
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Example 3.13 (A metre of water a year)
The latent heat flux, , evaporates every second of water per square metre. Over a year, seconds, this makes about , a layer of water thick over the whole Earth. The air holds only a little water at a time, so practically all of it falls back as rain and snow: the latent heat flux and the yearly rainfall of the planet are two faces of the same water cycle.