PCIC science brief: Two questions about the response of the Earth's climate to carbon emissions
Date
2015-02
Authors
Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)
Abstract
Two recently published articles serve to answer two questions about the response of the Earth's climate to carbon emissions. The first paper, by Goodwin et al. (2014) in Nature Geoscience, investigates the question of why transient surface warming on the timescale of decades to centuries, due to cumulative carbon emissions, is nearly-linear. They find that this is the result of the competing effects of the ocean absorbing both heat and carbon. While the former initially reduces climate sensitivity by drawing down heat, it then increases climate sensitivity as this heat absorption reduces. This is offset by the latter, as the ocean removes carbon dioxide from the air. The authors also find, in line with previous research, that increasing emissions lead to increased surface warming and that this warming will last many centuries.
The second article, by Ricke and Caldeira (2014) in Environmental Research Letters, uses model output to analyze the response of the Earth's climate to pulses of carbon dioxide in order to answer the question of how long it takes for maximum warming to occur due to a given emission. They find that the median time between such an emission and the maximum warming due to that emission is 10.1 years. Their results lead the authors to state that, "[o]ur results indicate that benefit from avoided CO2 emissions will be manifested within the lifetimes of people who acted to avoid [those emissions]."
Description
Keywords
UN SDG 13: Climate Action, #science brief, Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)