Andrews, T and Forster, PM orcid.org/0000-0002-6078-0171 (2020) Energy budget constraints on historical radiative forcing. Nature Climate Change, 10. pp. 313-316. ISSN 1758-678X
Abstract
Radiative forcing is a fundamental quantity for understanding anthropogenic and natural drivers of past and future climate change1, yet significant uncertainty remains in our quantification of radiative forcing and its model representation2,3,4. Here we use instrumental measurements of historical global mean surface temperature change and Earth’s total heat uptake, alongside estimates of the Earth’s radiative response, to provide a top-down energy budget constraint on historical (1861–1880 to near-present) effective radiative forcing of 2.3 W m−2 (1.7–3.0W m−2; 5–95% confidence interval). This represents a near 40% reduction in the 5–95% uncertainty range assessed by the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report2. Although precise estimates of effective radiative forcing in models do not widely exist, our results suggest that the effective radiative forcing may be too small in as many as one-third of climate models in the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. Improving model representation of radiative forcing should be a priority for modelling centres. This will reduce uncertainties in climate projections that have persisted for decades4,5.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Crown 2020. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Nature Climate Change. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 30 Apr 2020 14:04 |
Last Modified: | 10 Aug 2020 00:40 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41558-020-0696-1 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:159980 |