Carbon dioxide and climate impulse response functions for the computation of greenhouse gas metrics:a multi-model analysis

By F. Joos, R. Roth, J. Fuglestvedt, G. P. Peters, I. Enting, W. Bloh, V. Brovkin, E. Burke, M. Eby, N. Edwards and 18 more. 2012

749 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract. The responses of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other climate variables to an emission pulse of CO2 into the atmosphere are often used to compute the Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Global Temperature change Potential (GTP), to characterize the response timescales of Earth System models, and to build reduced-form models. In this carbon cycle-climate model intercomparison project, which spans the full model hierarchy, we quantify responses to emission pulses of different magnitudes injected under different conditions. The CO2 response shows the known rapid decline in the first few decades followed by a millennium-scale tail. For a 100 Gt-C emission pulse added to a constant CO2 concentration of 389 ppm, 25 ± 9% is still found in the atmosphere after 1000 yr; the ocean has absorbed 59 ± 12% and the land the remainder (16 ± 14%). The response in global mean surface air temperature is an increase by 0.20 ± 0.12 °C within the first twenty years; thereafter and until year 1000, temperature decreases only slightly, whereas ocean heat content and sea level continue to rise. Our best estimate for the Absolute Global Warming Potential, given by the time-integrated response in CO2 at year 100 multiplied by its radiative efficiency, is 92.5 × 10−15 yr W m−2 per kg-CO2. This value very likely (5 to 95% confidence) lies within the range of (68 to 117) × 10−15 yr W m−2 per kg-CO2. Estimates for time-integrated response in CO2 published in the IPCC First, Second, and Fourth Assessment and our multi-model best estimate all agree within 15% during the first 100 yr. The integrated CO2 response, normalized by the pulse size, is lower for pre-industrial conditions, compared to present day, and lower for smaller pulses than larger pulses. In contrast, the response in temperature, sea level and ocean heat content is less sensitive to these choices. Although, choices in pulse size, background concentration, and model lead to uncertainties, the most important and subjective choice to determine AGWP of CO2 and GWP is the time horizon.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bb875f31bda557479a5138c18f6589880eb7b244

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Citations in the corpus

A Simple Formula for the Social Cost of Carbon (2013, neutral): “Airborne fraction of CO2 emissions for 16 models, as in Joos et al. (2013) The BLOCKIN BLOCKIN added BLOCKIN BLOCKIN atmospheric BLOCKIN BLOCKIN CO2 BLOCKIN BLOCKIN increases BLOCKIN BLOCKIN the BLOCKIN BLOCKIN equilibrium BLOCKIN BLOCKIN global BLOCKIN BLOCKIN mean BLOCKIN BLOCKIN temperature…”
Climate benefits of natural gas as a bridge fuel and potential delay of near-zero energy systems (2016, neutral): “[35] parameter of the CO2 impulse response function and Prather et al.”
The Economic Geography of Global Warming (2021, background): “Dietz et al. (2021) argues that the dynamics of highly complex general circulation models can be ﬁtted, with a high degree of precision, using reduced-form models, like the one in Joos et al. (2013).”
Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission (2014, methodology): “In this analysis, we combine modeling data from a carboncycle modeling project (Joos et al 2013) with data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) (Taylor et al 2012) to evaluate the climate response to a pulse input of CO2 and its associated uncertainty. Fits to a collection ”
Cumulative carbon emissions and economic policy: In search of general principles (2019, background): “Similarly some models find the TCRE varies slightly with the rate of CO2 emissions (e.g. Krasting et al., 2014), i.e. it is not fully path-independent.”