A paper by Cox et al. introduces Ψ, “a theoretically informed metric of global temperature variability”, which scales with equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) across 16 General Circulation Models (GCMs). They report that Ψ provides a strong constraint on ECS, ruling out both high and low values. Our analysis shows that this constraint is sensitive to the GCMs considered, primarily reflects forced climate response rather than climate variability, and does not narrow uncertainty in ECS. It is therefore premature to rule out the possibility of large ECS values.
@article{osti_1477151,
author = {Po-Chedley, Stephen and Proistosescu, Cristian and Armour, Kyle C. and Santer, Benjamin D.},
title = {Forced temperature changes contaminate a natural variability constraint on climate sensitivity},
annote = {A paper by Cox et al. introduces Ψ, “a theoretically informed metric of global temperature variability”, which scales with equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) across 16 General Circulation Models (GCMs). They report that Ψ provides a strong constraint on ECS, ruling out both high and low values. Our analysis shows that this constraint is sensitive to the GCMs considered, primarily reflects forced climate response rather than climate variability, and does not narrow uncertainty in ECS. It is therefore premature to rule out the possibility of large ECS values.},
doi = {10.1038/nature25450},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1477151},
journal = {Nature (London)},
issn = {ISSN 0028-0836},
volume = {563},
place = {United States},
publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},
year = {2018},
month = {11}}
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 376, Issue 2121https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2018.0106