The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published a great deal of material on climate change. The Fourth Assessment report release in 2007 consisted of four volumes. It's not easy reading. Could it be boiled down to one graphic?
The IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM Fig. 2 is a good candidate. It compares the anthropogenic (human) climate forcings to natural forcings. The color blue indicates cooling effects and red indicates warming. Each source estimate (greenhouse gases, ozone, water vapor, surface albedo, aerosols, linear contrails and solar irradiance) is provided with error bars. Finally, the total net anthropogenic forcing is given with error bars, in other words, warming as a result of human forcings even given the error bars.
This graph was the topic of the last few lectures in a course I'm auditing, "The Global Warming Debate" being taught this semester at the University of Wisconsin by Jack Williams.
No comments:
Post a Comment