Climate sensitivity is a measure of how responsive the temperature of the climate system is to a change in the radiative forcing.
Although climate sensitivity is usually used in the context of radiative forcing by carbon dioxide, it is thought of as a general property of the climate system: the change in surface air temperature (ΔTs) following a unit change in radiative forcing (RF), and thus is expressed in units of °C/(W/m2). For this to be useful, the measure must be independent of the nature of the forcing (e.g. from greenhouse gases or solar variation); to first order this is indeed found to be so.
The climate sensitivity specifically due to CO2 is often expressed as the temperature change in °C associated with a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.
For a coupled atmosphere-ocean global climate model the climate sensitivity is an emergent property: it is not a model parameter, but rather a result of a combination of model physics and parameters. By contrast, simpler energy-balance models may have climate sensitivity as an explicit parameter.
The terms represented in the equation relate radiative forcing of any cause to linear changes in global surface temperature change.
It is also possible to estimate climate sensitivity from observations; however, this is difficult due to uncertainties in the forcing and temperature histories.
Read more about Climate Sensitivity: Equilibrium and Transient Climate Sensitivity, Radiative Forcing Functions, Sensitivity To Solar Forcing
Famous quotes containing the words climate and/or sensitivity:
“A tree is beautiful, but whats more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe.... What a terrible future!”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (18601904)
“Freedom of choice for women, at the expense of the caring, warmth, and sensitivity to others so often associated with them, may be empty. In the thrust to redefine male and female roles, women must not become men; nor can men be permitted the continual dehumanization of their roles.”
—Kathleen Weibel (b. 1945)