What is meant by climate sensitivity?

Climate sensitivity is typically defined as the global temperature rise following a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial levels. Pre-industrial CO2 was about 260 parts per million (ppm), so a doubling would be at roughly 520 ppm.

How sensitive is the climate?

The average estimated climate sensitivity has increased in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) compared to the previous generation, with values spanning 1.8 to 5.6 °C (3.2 to 10.1 °F) across 27 global climate models and exceeding 4.5 °C (8.1 °F) in 10 of them.

Why is climate sensitivity important?

Marvel: “The most important thing about climate sensitivity is that it’s not zero. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide definitely makes it warmer and increases the risk of extreme weather like drought, downpours, and heat waves. But better estimates of climate sensitivity are important for motivating action.

What is climate sensitivity quizlet?

the measure of how much the Earth’s global mean temperature will change in response to radiative forcing.

Which is the best definition of climate sensitivity?

Climate sensitivity is typically defined as the global temperature rise following a doubling of CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial levels. Pre-industrial CO 2 was about 260 parts per million (ppm), so a doubling would be at roughly 520 ppm.

How is climate sensitivity related to radiative imbalance?

Other agents can also cause a radiative imbalance. Climate sensitivity is the change in surface air temperature per unit change in radiative forcing, and the climate sensitivity parameter is therefore expressed in units of °C/ (W/m 2 ).

Why is climate sensitivity an emergent property in climate models?

For coupled atmosphere-ocean global climate models the climate sensitivity is an emergent property; rather than being a model parameter it is a result of a combination of model physics and parameters. By contrast, simpler energy-balance models may have climate sensitivity as an explicit parameter.

How is the climate sensitivity of carbon dioxide expressed?

Climate sensitivity. Thus, the sensitivity of temperature to gasses in the atmosphere (most notably carbon dioxide) is often expressed in terms of the change in temperature per doubling of the concentration of the gas.