The influence of internal variability on Earth's energy balance framework and implications for estimating climate sensitivity

Dessler, Andrew E.; Mauritsen, Thorsten; Stevens, Bjorn

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-5147-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 5147–5155, 2018

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-5147-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 5147–5155, 2018

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-5147-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

Research article 17 Apr 2018

Research article | 17 Apr 2018

The influence of internal variability on Earth's energy balance framework and implications for estimating climate sensitivity

Andrew E. Dessler et al.

Data sets

Data sets used to generate the figures M. Dessler and S. Mauritsen https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1206267

Model code and software

Code to generate figures M. Dessler and S. Mauritsen https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1206286

Short summary

One of the most important parameters in climate science is the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). Estimates of this quantity based on 20th-century observations suggest low values of ECS (below 2 °C). We show that these calculations may be significantly in error. Together with other recent work on this problem, it seems probable that the ECS is larger than suggested by the 20th-century observations.