Category: equilibrium climate sensitivity

Wikipedia defines equivalent climate sensitivity as follows:  Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) measures the temperature change in °C associated with a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere after the climate system has reached equilibrium.   Clive Best provides an excellent analysisof ECS and relates it to transient climate response (TCR).

Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) with a Doubling of CO2

by Bernie McCune

[Note:  This post is based on a presentation by Bernie McCune given at the 16 March 2019 meeting of the Cruces Atmospheric Sciences Forum in Las Cruces, NM. Ed.]

It has been 40 years this year since the Charney Report was published with a number of proposals for what CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere from http://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/A-willie-soon-tarot-card-part-9-156x300.jpghuman sources would likely do to global surface temperatures or so-called anthropogenic global warming.  Similarly, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed about that same time to determine the effects of human activity on global temperature.

Over the next few decades a large number of models (at least 73) were developed to show what these effects might be and terms for the models were devised.

Two of these terms, Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) and Transient Climate Response (TCR), were developed.  The ECS was the term that Continue reading “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) with a Doubling of CO2”