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2013 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Atmospheric Composition, Irreversible Climate Change, and Mitigation Policy

Authors : Susan Solomon, Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Damon Matthews, John S. Daniel, Pierre Friedlingstein

Published in: Climate Science for Serving Society

Publisher: Springer Netherlands

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Abstract

The Earth’s atmosphere is changing due to anthropogenic increases of gases and aerosols that influence the planetary energy budget. Policy has long been challenged to ensure that instruments such as the Kyoto Protocol or carbon trading deal with the wide range of lifetimes of these radiative forcing agents. Recent research has sharpened scientific understanding of how climate system time scales interact with the time scales of the forcing agents themselves. This has led to an improved understanding of metrics used to compare different forcing agents, and has prompted consideration of new metrics such as cumulative carbon. Research has also clarified the understanding that short-lived forcing agents can “trim the peak” of coming climate change, while long-lived agents, especially carbon dioxide, will be responsible for at least a millennium of elevated temperatures and altered climate, even if emissions were to cease. We suggest that these vastly differing characteristics imply that a single basket for trading among forcing agents is incompatible with current scientific understanding.

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previous chapter Carbon Dioxide and Climate: Perspectives on a Scientific Assessment

next chapter Building Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change in Less Developed Countries

Radiative forcing is defined (e.g., IPCC 2007) as the change in the net irradiance (downward minus upward, generally expressed in W m⁻²) at the tropopause due to a change in an external driver of the Earth’s energy budget, such as, for example, a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide.

The parameters we use in the following are: μ_deep = 20, μ_mix = 200 J/m² K and γ = λ = 2 W/m² K.

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Title: Atmospheric Composition, Irreversible Climate Change, and Mitigation Policy
Authors: Susan Solomon
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
Damon Matthews
John S. Daniel
Pierre Friedlingstein
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Book: Climate Science for Serving Society
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6691-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-94-007-6692-1

Copyright Year: 2013
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6692-1_15