Climate variations and the greenhouse effect

Book · Sat Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:182803

Michaels, P J; Knappenberger, P C; Gay, D A ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (United States). Dept. of Environmental Sciences

A number of recent publications have established the scientific paradigm that anthropogenerated sulfate aerosols are a sufficient explanation for the lack of observed greenhouse warming that has been predicted by transient general circulation climate models. This paper tests that hypothesis by examining the observed and modeled behavior of eigenvectors of the observed temperature field at three levels: hemispheric, polar, and over the regions where sulfate aerosol is most concentrated. Without sulfates in the transient model, there is no significant difference in explanatory power between the three test regions. In all three cases, the model creates much more spurious climatic change than it is able to capture. Most damaging to the sulfate hypothesis is that the GCM most accurately represents the behavior of the first eigenvector in summer in the high sulfate regions. This is where the difference between the model and observed temperatures is supposed to be greatest. Thus while the addition of sulfate aerosol to a transient general circulation model may improve its performance over some regions, this effect is insufficient to explain the overall lack of observed warming. This failure of the aerosol hypothesis is particularly evident in polar regions that are relatively aerosol-free, but also devoid of any significant warming.

• OSTI ID: 182803
• Report Number(s): CONF-940426--; ISBN 0-923204-11-3
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
ECOLOGICAL CONCENTRATION
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FORECASTING
GREENHOUSE EFFECT
SULFATES