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Inadequacy of effective CO2 as a proxy in simulating the greenhouse effect of other radiatively active gases

Abstract

The use of an 'effective' CO2 concentration to simulate the combined greenhouse effect of CO2 and the trace gases CH4, N2O, CFC-11 and CFC-12 is open to question, because the radiative-forcing behaviour of CO2 is very different from that of these other gases. Model simulations show that different radiative forcing can lead to quite different climatic effects. The thermal infrared opacity of these trace gases therefore needs to be explicitly accounted for when attempting to predict the climate response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.

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Wang, WC., Dudek, M., Liang, XZ. et al. Inadequacy of effective CO2 as a proxy in simulating the greenhouse effect of other radiatively active gases. Nature 350, 573–577 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1038/350573a0

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