Energy budget constraints on the time history of aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity

Smith, C. J., Harris, G. R., Palmer, M. D., Bellouin, N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2109-9559, Collins, W. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7419-0850, Myhre, G., Schulz, M., Golaz, J.-C., Ringer, M., Storelvmo, T. and Forster, P. M. (2021) Energy budget constraints on the time history of aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126 (13). e2020JD033622. ISSN 2169-897X doi: 10.1029/2020JD033622

Abstract/Summary

An observationally-constrained time series of historical aerosol effective radiative forcing (ERF) from 1750 to 2019 is developed in this paper. We find that the time history of aerosol ERFs diagnosed in CMIP6 models exhibits considerable variation and explore how the time history of aerosol forcing influences the probability distributions of present-day aerosol forcing and emergent metrics such as climate sensitivity. Using a simple energy balance model, trained on CMIP6 climate models and constrained by observed near-surface warming and ocean heat uptake, we derive estimates for the historical aerosol forcing. We find 2005-2014 mean aerosol ERF to be -1.1 (-1.8 to -0.5) W m-2 relative to 1750. Assuming recently published historical emissions from fossil fuel and industrial sectors and biomass burning emissions from SSP2-4.5, aerosol ERF in 2019 is -0.9 (-1.5 to -0.4) W m-2. There is a modest recovery in aerosol forcing (+0.025 W m-2 decade-1) between 1980 and 2014. This analysis also gives a 5-95% range of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of 1.8-5.1°C (best estimate 3.1°C) with a transient climate response (TCR) of 1.2-2.6°C (best estimate 1.8°C).

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-pure-test.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/98508
Identification Number/DOI	10.1029/2020JD033622
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology Central Services
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