QUESTION

What are “climate sensitivities,” and how do they impact climate change overall?

ANSWER

The theory is that global mean surface temperature (GMST) is a logarithmic function of atmospheric CO2 concentration. In practice, this relationship is measured as the temperature rise for each doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. This relationship is called equilibrium climate sensitivity or ECS. For example, if a doubling of atmospheric CO2 causes GMST to rise by 2C then ECS=2. In climate science the standardized value is ECS=3 but with an uncertainty range of 1.5 to 4.5, a rather large uncertainty that implies we don’t really know what the ECS is exactly.

This issue becomes all the more mysterious when we look at all the different values of ECS that climate scientists have measured and published over the years. For there we find ECS values all over the map. This range is much larger than the 1.5 to 4.5 range that has been standardized by the IPCC. It is so large that in any science other than climate science it would imply that we don’t really know the value of the ECS. Yet, the whole of the climate movement and their activism against fossil fuels is based on the ECS although they don’t know what that value is exactly.

DETAILS IN A RELATED POST: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/10/the-climate-sensitivity-issue/

RELATED POST: WHAT DOES UNCERTAINTY MEAN?

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/22/climate-science-uncertainty/