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Energy budget constraints on climate response

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 415–416 (2013)Cite this article

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To the Editor

The rate of global mean warming has been lower over the past decade than previously. It has been argued1,2,3,4,5 that this observation might require a downwards revision of estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity, that is, the long-term (equilibrium) temperature response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Using up-to-date data on radiative forcing, global mean surface temperature and total heat uptake in the Earth system, we find that the global energy budget6 implies a range of values for the equilibrium climate sensitivity that is in agreement with earlier estimates, within the limits of uncertainty. The energy budget of the most recent decade does, however, indicate a lower range of values for the more policy-relevant7 transient climate response (the temperature increase at the point of doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration following a linear ramp of increasing greenhouse gas forcing) than the range obtained by either analysing the energy budget of earlier decades or current climate model simulations8.

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Figure 1: Observations of the global energy budget and their implications.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    Alexander Otto, Friederike E. L. Otto & Myles R. Allen

  2. Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, IPSL/CNRS, UPMC, Paris, France

    Olivier Boucher

  3. CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research Hobart, Castray Esplanade, Hobart Tasmani, 7000, Australia

    John Church

  4. Grant Institute, University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JW, UK

    Gabi Hegerl

  5. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Piers M. Forster

  6. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, PO Box 3065 STNCSC, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Nathan P. Gillett

  7. Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, PO Box 243, Reading, RG6 6BB, UK

    Jonathan Gregory

  8. NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, 98115, Washington, USA

    Gregory C. Johnson

  9. Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, 8092, Switzerland

    Reto Knutti & Ulrike Lohmann

  10. Walden, Widcombe Hill, Bath, BA2 6ED, UK

    Nicholas Lewis

  11. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstraße 53, Hamburg, D-20146, Germany

    Jochem Marotzke & Bjorn Stevens

  12. CICERO, P.O. Box 1129 Blindern, Oslo, N-0318, Norway

    Gunnar Myhre

  13. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, 10025, New York, USA

    Drew Shindell

  14. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK

    Myles R. Allen

Authors
  1. Alexander Otto
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  2. Friederike E. L. Otto
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  16. Bjorn Stevens
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Contributions

O.B., J.C., G.H., P.F., N.P.G., J.G., G.C.J., R.K., N.L., U.L., J.M., G.M., D.S., B.S., and M.R.A. conceived the analysis and designed the headline figure. P.M.F. provided the forcing data and estimates. G.C.J. provided the heat content data. A.O. conducted the analysis and produced the figures. A.O., F.E.L.O., M.R.A., P.M.F., O.B., and G.C.J contributed to writing the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander Otto.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary information (corrected)

Supplementary information (corrected) (PDF 570 kb)

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Otto, A., Otto, F., Boucher, O. et al. Energy budget constraints on climate response. Nature Geosci 6, 415–416 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1836

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