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Atmospheric chemistry

Climate's chemical sensitivity

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 21–22 (2015)Cite this article

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Constraining climate sensitivity is a top priority for climate science. Now research shows that the details of how stratospheric ozone is represented in models can have a strong influence on warming projections.

To predict how climate will change we need to know just two things: the future forcings on the Earth system, and the feedbacks that will ensue. The first requires forecasts of socioeconomics, technology, and human behaviour to be translated into changes in the planetary energy budget; for example, via changes in anthropogenic emissions and atmospheric composition. The second requires understanding of how processes interact to either amplify or damp climate response to the forcing, together with the timescales over which they operate. This response is encapsulated by a parameter called the climate sensitivity. Warmer air can (and generally does) accommodate more water vapour molecules. As water vapour is a greenhouse gas, any warming is amplified: this represents a positive feedback — it increases climate sensitivity. Several other feedbacks operate in the Earth system, including those associated with sea ice and clouds; most are positive. Negative feedbacks appear to be less common. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Peer Nowack and co-authors2 report a large negative feedback, which causes a significant (in the order of 20%) reduction in climate sensitivity, resulting from a more comprehensive model representation of stratospheric ozone chemistry.

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Figure 1: Climatological longitudinally averaged ozone distribution for January–March.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David S. Stevenson is in the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3FF, UK,

    David S. Stevenson

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  1. David S. Stevenson
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Correspondence to David S. Stevenson.

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Stevenson, D. Climate's chemical sensitivity. Nature Clim Change 5, 21–22 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2477

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