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AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Keywords

  • climate feedback
  • climate sensitivity
  • radiation

Index Terms

  • Atmospheric Processes: Climate change and variability
  • Atmospheric Processes: Radiative processes
  • Atmospheric Processes: Clouds and cloud feedbacks
  • Global Change: Climate variability
  • Global Change: Global climate models

Abstract

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L16705, 6 PP., 2009
doi:10.1029/2009GL039628

On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data

Richard S. Lindzen

Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Yong-Sang Choi

Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.

Received 16 June 2009; accepted 20 July 2009; published 26 August 2009.

Citation: Lindzen, R. S., and Y.-S. Choi (2009), On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L16705, doi:10.1029/2009GL039628.

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