Articles | Volume 13, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1715-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1715-2022
Research article
 | 
19 Dec 2022
Research article |  | 19 Dec 2022

Potential for bias in effective climate sensitivity from state-dependent energetic imbalance

Benjamin M. Sanderson and Maria Rugenstein

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Cited articles

Andrews, T., Gregory, J. M., Webb, M. J., and Taylor, K. E.: Forcing, feedbacks and climate sensitivity in CMIP5 coupled atmosphere-ocean climate models, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L09712, https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL051607, 2012. a
Andrews, T., Gregory, J. M., and Webb, M. J.: The dependence of radiative forcing and feedback on evolving patterns of surface temperature change in climate models, J. Climate, 28, 1630–1648, 2015. a
Andrews, T., Gregory, J. M., Paynter, D., Silvers, L. G., Zhou, C., Mauritsen, T., Webb, M. J., Armour, K. C., Forster, P. M., and Titchner, H.: Accounting for Changing Temperature Patterns Increases Historical Estimates of Climate Sensitivity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 45, 8490–8499, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078887, 2018. a
Armour, K. C., Bitz, C. M., and Roe, G. H.: Time-Varying Climate Sensitivity from Regional Feedbacks, J. Climate, 26, 4518–4534, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00544.1, 2013. a
Bastiaansen, R., Dijkstra, H. A., and Heydt, A. S. v. d.: Projections of the Transient State-Dependency of Climate Feedbacks, Geophys. Res. Lett., 48, e2021GL094670, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL094670, 2021. a
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Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is a measure of how much long-term warming should be expected in response to a change in greenhouse gas concentrations. It is generally calculated in climate models by extrapolating global average temperatures to a point of where the planet is no longer a net absorber of energy. Here we show that some climate models experience energy leaks which change as the planet warms, undermining the standard approach and biasing some existing model estimates of ECS.
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