Forster, PM orcid.org/0000-0002-6078-0171 (2016) Inference of Climate Sensitivity from Analysis of the Earth’s Energy Budget. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 44. pp. 85-106. ISSN 0084-6597
Abstract
Recent attempts to diagnose equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) from changes in Earth's energy budget point toward values at the low end of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)'s likely range (1.5–4.5 K). These studies employ observations but still require an element of modeling to infer ECS. Their diagnosed effective ECS over the historical period of around 2 K holds up to scrutiny, but there is tentative evidence that this underestimates the true ECS from a doubling of carbon dioxide. Different choices of energy imbalance data explain most of the difference between published best estimates, and effective radiative forcing dominates the overall uncertainty. For decadal analyses the largest source of uncertainty comes from a poor understanding of the relationship between ECS and decadal feedback. Considerable progress could be made by diagnosing effective radiative forcing in models.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Keywords: | Transient climate response; ocean heat uptake; radiative forcing; aerosol; simple climate models |
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) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EPSRC EP/I014721/1 Royal Society WRM110067 US Department of Energy (PHS) Project 1552083 NERC NE/N006038/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Feb 2016 16:14 |
Last Modified: | 08 Nov 2016 22:16 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-060614-105... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Annual Reviews |
Identification Number: | 10.1146/annurev-earth-060614-105156 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:93843 |