2019/11/19 by Maria Rugenstein, Jonah Bloch‐Johnson, Jonathan M. Gregory +13 · 1 citation
Environmental Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Mathematics · #Climate variability and models #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Marine and coastal ecosystems #Climate sensitivity #Climatology #Environmental science #Extrapolation #Climate model #Climate change #Global warming #Latitude #Sensitivity (control systems) #Range (aeronautics) #Atmospheric sciences #Coupled model intercomparison project #Geology #Mathematics #Statistics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1029/2019gl083898
openalex publication_date 2019/11/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract The methods to quantify equilibrium climate sensitivity are still debated. We collect millennial‐length simulations of coupled climate models and show that the global mean equilibrium warming is higher than those obtained using extrapolation methods from shorter simulations. Specifically, 27 simulations with 15 climate models forced with a range of CO 2 concentrations show a median 17% larger equilibrium warming than estimated from the first 150 years of the simulations. The spatial patterns of radiative feedbacks change continuously, in most regions reducing their tendency to stabilizing the climate. In the equatorial Pacific, however, feedbacks become more stabilizing with time. The global feedback evolution is initially dominated by the tropics, with eventual substantial contributions from the mid‐latitudes. Time‐dependent feedbacks underscore the need of a measure of climate sensitivity that accounts for the degree of equilibration, so that models, observations, and paleo proxies can be adequately compared and aggregated to estimate future warming.