Bayesian estimation of Earth's climate sensitivity and transient climate response from observational warming and heat content datasets

Goodwin, Philip; Cael, B. B.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-709-2021

Articles | Volume 12, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-709-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-709-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 2

Research article

|

17 Jun 2021

Research article |

| 17 Jun 2021

Bayesian estimation of Earth's climate sensitivity and transient climate response from observational warming and heat content datasets

Philip Goodwin and B. B. Cael

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-709-2021-supplement

Data sets

HadCRUT.5.0.0.0 Data Download Met Office Hadley Centre https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut5/data/HadCRUT.5.0.0.0/download.html

HadSST.4.0 Data Download Met Office Hadley Centre https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadsst4/data/download.html

Global Ocean Heat Content National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

Global Ocean Heat Content estimate from 1940 to 2019 (v3, Monthly) L. Cheng http://159.226.119.60/cheng/images_files/IAP_OHC_estimate_update.txt

Supplemental data of Global Carbon Budget 2018 (Version 1.0), Data set, Global Carbon Project Global Carbon Project https://doi.org/10.18160/gcp-2018

Model code and software

WASP Earth System Model v3.0, March2021 P. Goodwin and B. B. Cael https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4639491

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Short summary

Climate sensitivity is a key measure of how sensitive Earth's climate is to human release of greenhouse gasses, such as from fossil fuels. However, there is still uncertainty as to the value of climate sensitivity, in part because different climate feedbacks operate over multiple timescales. This study assesses hundreds of millions of climate simulations against historical observations to reduce uncertainty in climate sensitivity and future climate warming.