Determination of Earth's Transient and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivities from Observations Over the Twentieth Century: Strong Dependence on Assumed Forcing

Surveys in Geophysics

Volumn 33, Issue 3-4, 2012, Pages 745-777

  Schwartz, Stephen E ^a  

^a BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY   (United States)

Author keywords

Climate sensitivity; Forcing; Global mean surface temperature; Heat capacity; Time constant

Indexed keywords

CLIMATE SENSITIVITY; CLIMATE SYSTEM; DATA SETS; DEEP OCEAN; EARTH'S CLIMATE; ENERGY BALANCE MODELS; FORCING; FORCINGS; FUNCTION OF TIME; GLOBAL MEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE; GLOBAL TEMPERATURES; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGES; MULTI-DECADAL TIME SCALE; OCEAN HEAT CONTENT; RADIATION TRANSFER MODEL; RADIATIVE FORCINGS; THERMAL EQUILIBRATIONS; TIME CONSTANTS; TIME DERIVATIVE; TWENTIETH CENTURY; UPPER OCEAN; WORLD OCEAN;

ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION; ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE; CARBON DIOXIDE; CLIMATE CHANGE; ENTHALPY; GREENHOUSE GASES; OCEANOGRAPHY; SEAWATER; SPECIFIC HEAT; SURFACE PROPERTIES; UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS;

CLIMATE MODELS;

AEROSOL COMPOSITION; CLIMATE CHANGE; CLIMATE FORCING; DATA SET; ENERGY BALANCE; GREENHOUSE GAS; HEAT FLUX; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE; RADIATIVE TRANSFER; SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE; SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS; TEMPERATURE ANOMALY; TEMPERATURE GRADIENT; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

EID: 84862659055     PISSN: 01693298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10712-012-9180-4     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. Allen MR, Frame DJ (2007) Call off the quest. Science 318: 582-583. doi: 10. 1126/science. 1149988.
2. Andrews DG, Allen MR (2008) Diagnosis of climate models in terms of transient climate response and feedback response time. Atmos Sci Lett 9: 7-12. doi: 10. 1002/asl. 163.
3. Andrews T, Forster PM, Gregory JM (2009) A surface energy perspective on climate change. J Clim 22(10): 2557-2570. doi: 10. 1175/2008JCLI2759. 1.
4. Baker MB, Roe GH (2009) The shape of things to come: why is climate change so predictable? J Clim 22: 4574-4589. doi: 10. 1175/2009JCLI2647. 1.
5. Boer GJ, Yu B (2002) Climate sensitivity and climate state. Clim Dyn 21: 167-176. doi: 10. 1007/s00382-003-0323-7.
6. Boer GJ, Stowasser M, Hamilton K (2007) Inferring climate sensitivity from volcanic events. Clim Dyn 28: 481-502. doi: 10. 1007/s00382-006-0193-x.
7. Boucher O, Reddy MS (2008) Climate trade-off between black carbon and carbon dioxide emissions. Energy Policy 36: 193-200. doi 10. 1016/j. enpol. 2007. 08. 039.
8. Brasseur GP, Roeckner E (2005) Impact of improved air quality on the future evolution of climate. Geophys Res Lett 32: L23704. doi: 10. 1029/2005GL023902.
9. Brohan P, Kennedy JJ, Harris I, Tett SFB, Jones PD (2006) Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J Geophys Res 111: D12106. doi: 10. 1029/2005JD006548.
10. Cleveland WS, Devlin SJ (1988) Locally-weighted regression: an approach to regression analysis by local fitting. J Am Stat Assoc 83(403): 596-610. doi: 10. 2307/2289282.
11. Collins WD, Ramaswamy V, Schwarzkopf MD, Sun Y, Portmann RW, Fu Q, Casanova SEB, Defresne J-L, Fillmore DW, Forster PMD, Galin VY, Gohar LK, Ingram WJ, Kratz DP, Lefebvre M-P, Li J, Marquet P, Oinas V, Tsushima T, Uchiyama T, Zhong WY (2006) Radiative forcing by well-mixed greenhouse gases: estimates from climate models in the IPCC AR4. J Geophys Res 111: D14317. doi: 10. 1029/2005JD006713.
12. Domingues CM, Church JA, White NJ, Gleckler PJ, Wijffels SE, Barker PM, Dunn JR (2008) Improved estimates of upper-ocean warming and multi-decadal sea-level rise. Nature 453: 1090-1093. doi: 10. 1038/nature07080.
13. Dufresne J-L, Bony S (2008) An assessment of the primary sources of spread of global warming estimates from coupled atmosphere-ocean models. J Clim 21: 5135-5144. doi: 10. 1175/2008JCLI2239. 1.
14. Forster PMF, Gregory JM (2006) The climate sensitivity and its components diagnosed from earth radiation budget data. J Clim 19: 39-52. doi: 10. 1175/JCLI3611. 1.
15. Forster PMD, Taylor KE (2006) Climate forcings and climate sensitivities diagnosed from coupled climate model integrations. J Clim 19: 6181-6194. doi: 10. 1175/JCLI3974. 1.
16. Frame DJ, Booth BBB, Kettleborough JA, Stainforth DA, Gregory JM, Collins M, Allen MR (2005) Constraining climate forecasts: the role of prior assumptions. Geophys Res Lett 32: L09702. doi: 09710. 01029/02004GL022241.
17. Gouretski V, Reseghetti F (2010) On depth and temperature biases in bathythermograph data: development of a new correction scheme based on the analysis of global ocean data. Deep-Sea Res I 57: 812-833. doi: 10. 1016/j. dsr. 2010. 03. 011.
18. Gregory JM (2000) Vertical heat transports in the ocean and their effect on time-dependent climate change. Clim Dyn 16: 501-515. doi: 10. 1007/s003820000059.
19. Gregory JM, Forster PM (2008) Transient climate response estimated from radiative forcing and observed temperature change. J Geophys Res 113: D23105. doi: 10. 1029/2008JD010405.
20. Gregory JM, Stouffer RJ, Raper SCB, Stott PA, Rayner NA (2002) An observationally based estimate of the climate sensitivity. J Clim 15(22): 3117-3121. doi: 10. 1175/1520-0442(2002)015< 3117: AOBEOT> 2. 0. CO; 2.
21. Hansen J, Sato M, Ruedy R (1997) Radiative forcing and climate response. J Geophys Res 102: 6831-6864. doi: 10. 1029/96JD03436.
22. Hansen J, Nazarenko L, Ruedy R, Sato M, Willis J, DelGenio A, Koch D, Lacis A, Lo K, Menon S, Tovakov T, Perlwitz J, Russell G, Schmidt GA, Tausnev N (2005) Earth's energy imbalance: confirmation and implications. Science 308: 1431-1435. doi: 1410. 1126/science. 1110252.
23. Hansen J, Ruedy R, Sato M, Lo K (2010) Global surface temperature change. Rev Geophys 48: RG4004. doi: 10. 1029/2010RG000345.
24. Hansen J, Sato M, Kharecha P, von Schuckmann K (2011) Earth's energy imbalance and implications. Atmos Chem Phys 11: 13421-13449. doi: 10. 5194/acp-11-13421-2011.
25. Held IM, Winton M, Takahashi K, Delworth T, Zeng F, Vallis GK (2010) Probing the fast and slow components of global warming by returning abruptly to preindustrial forcing. J Clim 23: 2418-2427. doi: 10. 1175/2009JCLI3466. 1.
26. Hoffert MI, Callegari AJ, Hsieh CT (1980) The role of deep sea heat storage in the secular response to climate forcing. J Geophys Res 85: 6667-6679. doi: 10. 1029/JC085iC11p06667.
27. IPCC (2007) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M (eds) Intergovernmental panel on climate change, Geneva. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html.
28. Ishii M, Kimoto M (2009) Reevaluation of historical ocean heat content variations with time-varying XBT and MBT depth bias corrections. J Oceanogr 65: 287-299. doi: 10. 1007/s10872-009-0027-7.
29. Jarvis A, Li S (2011) The contribution of timescales to the temperature response of climate models. Clim Dyn 36: 523-531. doi: 10. 1007/s00382-010-0753-y.
30. Jones GS, Christidis N, Stott PA (2011) Detecting the influence of fossil fuel and bio-fuel black carbon aerosols on near surface temperature changes. Atmos Chem Phys 11: 799-816. doi 10. 5194/acp-11-799-2011.
31. Joshi M, Shine K, Ponater M, Stuber N, Sausen R, Li L (2003) A comparison of climate response to different radiative forcing in three general circulation models: towards and improved metric of climate change. Clim Dyn 20: 843-854. doi: 10. 1007/s00382-003-0305-9.
32. Kiehl JT (2007) Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity. Geophys Res Lett 34: L22710. doi: 10. 1029/2007GL031383.
33. Kloster S, Dentener F, Feichter J, Raes F, Lohmann U, Roeckner E, Fischer-Bruns I (2010) A GCM study of future climate response to aerosol pollution reductions. Clim Dyn 34: 1177-1194. doi: 10. 1007/s00382-009-0573-0.
34. Knutti R (2008) Why are climate models reproducing the observed global surface warming so well? Geophys Res Lett 35: L18704. doi: 10. 1029/2008GL034932.
35. Knutti R, Plattner G-K, (2012) Comment on Why Hasn't earth warmed as much as expected? by Schwartz et al. 2010. J Clim 25: 2192-2199. doi 10. 1175/2011JCLI4038. 1.
36. Knutti R, Krähenmann S, Frame DJ, Allen MR (2008) Comment on ''Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth's climate system'' by S. E. Schwartz. J Geophys Res 113: D15103. doi: 10. 1029/2007JD009473.
37. Levitus S, Antonov J, Boyer T (2005) Warming of the world ocean, 1955-2003. Geophys Res Lett 32: L02604. doi 10. 1029/2004GL021592.
38. Levitus S, Antonov JI, Boyer TP, Locarnini RA, Garcia HE, Mishonov AV (2009) Global ocean heat content 1955-2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems. Geophys Res Lett 36: L07608. doi: 10. 1029/2008GL037155.
39. Lohmann U, Rotstayn L, Storelvmo T, Jones A, Menon S, Quaas J, Ekman AML, Koch D, Ruedy R (2010) Total aerosol effect: radiative forcing or radiative flux perturbation? Atmos Chem Phys 10(7): 3235-3246. doi: 10. 5194/acp-10-3235-2010.
40. Lucarini V, Ragone F (2011) Energetics of climate models: net energy balance and meridional enthalpy transport. Rev Geophys 49: RG1001. doi: 10. 1029/2009RG000323.
41. Lyman JM (2011) Estimating global energy flow from the global upper ocean. Surv Geophys. doi 10. 1007/s10712-011-9167-6.
42. Lyman JM, Johnson GC (2008) Estimating annual global upper ocean heat content anomalies despite irregular in situ ocean sampling. J Clim 21: 5629-5641. doi: 10. 1175/2008JCLI2259. 1.
43. Matthews HD, Caldeira K (2007) Transient climate-carbon simulations of planetary geoengineering. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104: 9949-9954. doi: 10. 1073/pnas. 0700419104.
44. Meehl GA, Washington WM, Wigley TML, Arblaster JM, Dai A (2003) Solar and greenhouse gas forcing and climate response in the twentieth century. JClim 16: 426-444. doi: 10. 1175/1520-0442(2003)016< 0426: SAGGFA> 2. 0. CO; 2.
45. Meinshausen M, Smith S, Calvin K, Daniel JS, Kainuma M, Lamarque J-F, Matsumoto K, Montzka SA, Raper SCB, Riahi K, Thomson AM, Velders GJM, van Vuuren D (2011) The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extension from 1765 to 2300. Clim Chang. doi 10. 1007/s10584-011-0156-z.
46. Murphy DM, Solomon S, Portmann RW, Rosenlof KH, Forster PM, Wong T (2009) An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950. J Geophys Res 114: D17107. doi: 10. 1029/2009JD012105.
47. Myhre G, Highwood EJ, Shine KP, Stordal F (1998) New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases. Geophys Res Lett 25: 2715-2718. doi: 10. 1029/98GL01908.
48. Myhre G, Myhre A, Stordal F (2001) Historical evolution of radiative forcing of climate. Atmos Environ 35: 2361-2373. doi: 10. 1016/S1352-2310(00)00531-8.
49. Padilla LE, Vallis GK, Rowley CW (2011) Probabilistic estimates of transient climate sensitivity subject to uncertainty in forcing and natural variability. J Clim 24: 5521-5537. doi: 10. 1175/2011JCLI3989. 1.
50. Palmer MD, Haines K, Tett SFB, Ansell TJ (2007) Isolating the signal of ocean global warming. Geophys Res Lett 34: L23610. doi: 10. 1029/2007GL031712.
51. Palmer M, Antonov J, Barker P, Bindoff N, Boyer T, Carson M, Domingues C, C. SG, Gleckler P, Good S, Gouretski V, Guinehut S, Haines K, Harrison DE, Ishii M, Johnson G, Levitus S, Lozier S, Lyman J, Meijers A, Schuckmann Kv, Smith D, Wijffels S, Willis J (2010) Future observations for monitoring global ocean heat content. In: Hall J, Harrison DE, Stammer D (eds) Proceedings of the OceanObs' 09: Sustained ocean observations and information for society Conference (vol 2), Venice, Italy, 21-25 September 2009. ESA Publication WPP-306. doi 10. 5270/OceanObs09. cwp. 68.
52. Pilewskie P (2011) Measurements of solar spectral irradiance. ISSI Workshop on Observing and Modeling Earth's Energy Flows. Bern, 10--14 January 2011.
53. Scafetta N (2008) Comment on Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth's climate system by S. E. Schwartz. J Geophys Res 113: D15104. doi 10. 1029/2007JD009586.
54. Schwartz SE (2004) Uncertainty requirements in radiative forcing of climate change. J Air Waste Manag Assoc 54: 1351-1359. doi: 10. 1080/10473289. 2004. 10471006.
55. Schwartz SE (2007) Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth's climate system. J Geophys Res 112(D24): D24S05. doi: 10. 1029/2007JD008746.
56. Schwartz SE (2008a) Reply to comments by G. Foster et al., R. Knutti et al., and N. Scafetta on "Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth's climate system". J Geophys Res 113: D15105. doi: 10. 1029/2008JD009872.
57. Schwartz SE (2008b) Uncertainty in climate sensitivity: causes, consequences, challenges. Energy Environ Sci 1: 430-453. doi: 10. 1039/B810350J.
58. Schwartz SE, Charlson RJ, Kahn RA, Ogren JA, Rodhe H (2010) Why hasn't Earth warmed as much as expected? J Clim 23: 2453-2464. doi: 10. 1175/2009JCLI3461. 1.
59. Smith TM, Reynolds RW, Peterson TC, Lawrimore J (2008) Improvements to NOAA's historical merged land-ocean surface temperature analysis (1880-2006). J Clim 21: 2283-2296. doi: 10. 1175/2007JCLI2100. 1.
60. Stevens B, Schwartz SE (2012) Observing and modeling Earth's energy flows. Surv Geophys. doi 10. 1007/s10712-012-9184-0.
61. Sutton P, Roemmich D (2001) Ocean temperature climate off north-east New Zealand. N Z J Marine Freshw Res 35: 553-565. doi: 10. 1080/00288330. 2001. 9517022.
62. Takemura T, Tsushima Y, Yokohata T, Nozawa T, Nagashima T, Nakajima T (2006) Time evolutions of various radiative forcings for the past 150 years estimated by a general circulation model. Geophys Res Lett 33: L19705. doi: 10. 1029/2006GL026666.
63. Watterson G, Dix MR (2005) Effective sensitivity and heat capacity in the response of climate models to greenhouse gas and aerosol forcings. Q J R Meteorol Soc 131: 259-279. doi: 10. 1256/qj. 03. 232.
64. Webb MJ, Senior CA, Sexton DMH, Ingram WJ, Williams KD, Ringer MA, McAvaney BJ, Colman R, Soden BJ, Gudgel R, Knutson T, Emori S, Ogura T, Tsushima Y, Andronova N, Li B, Musat I, Bony S, Taylor KE (2006) On the contribution of local feedback mechanisms to the range of climate sensitivity in two GCM ensembles. Clim Dyn 27: 17-38. doi 10. 1007/s00382-006-0111-2.
65. Willis JK, Roemmich D, Cornuelle B (2004) Interannual variability in upper ocean heat content, temperature, and thermosteric expansion on global scales. J Geophys Res 109: C12036. doi: 10. 1029/2003JC002260.