Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
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Articles | Volume 24, issue 4
Articles | Volume 24, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-2679-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Special issue:
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-2679-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 24, issue 4
Opinion
 | Highlight paper
 | 
29 Feb 2024
Opinion | Highlight paper |  | 29 Feb 2024

Opinion: Can uncertainty in climate sensitivity be narrowed further?

Steven C. Sherwood and Chris E. Forest

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Cited articles

Andrews, T., Bodas-Salcedo, A., Gregory, J. M., Dong, Y., Armour, K. C., Paynter, D., Lin, P., Modak, A., Mauritsen, T., Cole, J. N. S., Medeiros, B., Benedict, J. J., Douville, H., Roehrig, R., Koshiro, T., Kawai, H., Ogura, T., Dufresne, J.-L., Allan, R. P., and Liu, C.: On the Effect of Historical SST Patterns on Radiative Feedback, J. Geophys. Res., 127, 36675, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JD036675, 2022. a
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Brown, R. M., Chalk, T. B., Crocker, A. J., Wilson, P. A., and Foster, G. L.: Late Miocene cooling coupled to carbon dioxide with Pleistocene-like climate sensitivity, Nat. Geosci., 15, 664+, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00982-7, 2022. a
Ceppi, P. and Nowack, P.: Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming, P. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 118, e2026290118, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2026290118, 2021. a
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Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), with a specific definition, has been used as a convenient measure, encapsulated in a single number, of the response of the climate to increases in long-lived greenhouse gases. The authors recall some of the history of how ECS has been estimated, by models and observations, including paleoclimate data and note recent progress in reducing uncertainty in the value of ECS. However they also note that there are important aspects of future potential climate change that are not captured by the ECS measure and therefore that there will be limited usefulness in too strong a focus on reducing uncertainty in ECS alone.
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The most fundamental parameter used to gauge the severity of future climate change is the so-called equilibrium climate sensitivity, which measures the warming that would ultimately occur due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Due to recent advances it is now thought to probably lie in the range 2.5–4 °C. We discuss this and the issues involved in evaluating and using the number, pointing to some pitfalls in current efforts but also possibilities for further progress.
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