2002/01/04 by Chris E. Forest, Peter H. Stone, Andrei Sokolov +2 · 7 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Environmental Science · #Climate Change Policy and Economics #Climate variability and models #Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics #Forcing (mathematics) #Climate sensitivity #Environmental science #Climate change #Climate model #Climatology #Climate system #Aerosol #Radiative forcing #Climate commitment #Sensitivity (control systems) #Atmospheric sciences #Range (aeronautics) #Meteorology #Global warming #Effects of global warming #Geography #Geology #Oceanography
paper · doi:10.1126/science.1064419
openalex publication_date 2002/01/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
We derive joint probability density distributions for three key uncertain properties of the climate system, using an optimal fingerprinting approach to compare simulations of an intermediate complexity climate model with three distinct diagnostics of recent climate observations. On the basis of the marginal probability distributions, the 5 to 95% confidence intervals are 1.4 to 7.7 kelvin for climate sensitivity and -0.30 to -0.95 watt per square meter for the net aerosol forcing. The oceanic heat uptake is not well constrained, but ocean temperature observations do help to constrain climate sensitivity. The uncertainty in the net aerosol forcing is much smaller than the uncertainty range for the indirect aerosol forcing alone given in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report.