Comment on "Moist Static Energy Transport Trends in Four Global Reanalyses: Are They Downgradient?" by Clark et al. (2022)

Given the key role that atmospheric heat transport plays in Earth's climate system, efforts to document its changes over the satellite era are valuable. Clark et al. (2022, ) calculated trends in atmospheric heat transport among four reanalysis data sets and found substantial disagreements between data sets. However, after accounting for the lack of mass-conservation in reanalysis data sets, we find much smaller magnitude trends, with much better agreement among reanalyses. This highlights the importance of mass corrections when calculating atmospheric heat transport.