/pdf/climate-change-2007-the-physical-science-basis-summary-for-lktk15i9js.pdf

Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis Summary for Policymakers:

Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably. A multifaceted and linked global strategy is needed to ensure sustainable and equitable food security, different components of which are explored here.

/pdf/food-security-the-challenge-of-feeding-9-billion-people-7gwey15y62.pdf

Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People

Human alteration of Earth is substantial and growing. Between one-third and one-half of the land surface has been transformed by human action; the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased by nearly 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; more atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by humanity than by all natural terrestrial sources combined; more than half of all accessible surface fresh water is put to use by humanity; and about one-quarter of the bird species on Earth have been driven to extinction. By these and other standards, it is clear that we live on a human-dominated planet.

/pdf/human-domination-of-earth-s-ecosystems-5eevmqq987.pdf

Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems

The ERA5 global reanalysis

Drafting Authors: Neil Adger, Pramod Aggarwal, Shardul Agrawala, Joseph Alcamo, Abdelkader Allali, Oleg Anisimov, Nigel Arnell, Michel Boko, Osvaldo Canziani, Timothy Carter, Gino Casassa, Ulisses Confalonieri, Rex Victor Cruz, Edmundo de Alba Alcaraz, William Easterling, Christopher Field, Andreas Fischlin, Blair Fitzharris, Carlos Gay García, Clair Hanson, Hideo Harasawa, Kevin Hennessy, Saleemul Huq, Roger Jones, Lucka Kajfež Bogataj, David Karoly, Richard Klein, Zbigniew Kundzewicz, Murari Lal, Rodel Lasco, Geoff Love, Xianfu Lu, Graciela Magrín, Luis José Mata, Roger McLean, Bettina Menne, Guy Midgley, Nobuo Mimura, Monirul Qader Mirza, José Moreno, Linda Mortsch, Isabelle Niang-Diop, Robert Nicholls, Béla Nováky, Leonard Nurse, Anthony Nyong, Michael Oppenheimer, Jean Palutikof, Martin Parry, Anand Patwardhan, Patricia Romero Lankao, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Stephen Schneider, Serguei Semenov, Joel Smith, John Stone, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, David Vaughan, Coleen Vogel, Thomas Wilbanks, Poh Poh Wong, Shaohong Wu, Gary Yohe

Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

As part of its commitment to openness and transparency, the IPCC releases drafts that have been submitted for formal expert and/or government review, review comments on these drafts, and author responses to these comments after publication of the associated IPCC Report or Technical Paper. During the multi‐stage review process, expert reviewers and governments are invited to comment on the accuracy and completeness of the scientific/technical/socioeconomic content and the overall balance of the drafts. Therefore, review comments and author responses should be considered within the context of the final report. Drafts, review comments, and author responses are pre‐decisional materials that are confidential until publication of the final Report or Technical Paper; they are not the results of the assessment and may not be cited, quoted, or distributed as such. Only the approved, adopted, and accepted Reports or Technical Papers may be cited or quoted as the results of the assessment.

The intergovernmental panel on climate change

The situation considered is that of a zonally symmetric model of the middle atmosphere subject to a given quasi-steady zonal force F, conceived to be the result of irreversible angular momentum transfer due to the upward propagation and breaking of Rossby and gravity waves together with any other dissipative eddy effects that may be relevant. The model's diabatic heating is assumed to have the qualitative character of a relaxation toward some radiatively determined temperature field. To the extent that the force F may be regarded as given, and the extratropical angular momentum distribution is realistic, the extratropical diabatic mass flow across a given isentropic surface may be regarded as controlled exclusively by the F distribution above that surface (implying control by the eddy dissipation above that surface and not, for instance, by the frequency of tropopause folding below). This “downward control” principle expresses a critical part of the dynamical chain of cause and effect governin...

/pdf/on-the-downward-control-of-extratropical-diabatic-26udk748c6.pdf

On the “Downward Control” of Extratropical Diabatic Circulations by Eddy-Induced Mean Zonal Forces

We have performed new calculations of the radiative forcing due to changes in the concentrations of the most important well mixed greenhouse gases (WMGG) since pre-industrial time. Three radiative transfer models are used. The radiative forcing due to CO2, including shortwave absorption, is 15% lower than the previous IPCC estimate. The radiative forcing due to all the WMGG is calculated to 2.25 Wm−2, which we estimate to be accurate to within about 5%. The importance of the CFCs is increased by about 20% relative to the total effect of all WMGG compared to previous estimates. We present updates to simple forcing-concentration relationships previously used by IPCC.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/98GL01908

New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases

Our current understanding of mechanisms that are, or may be, acting to cause climate change over the past century is briefly reviewed, with an emphasis on those due to human activity. The paper discusses the general level of confidence in these estimates and areas of remaining uncertainty. The effects of increases in the so-called well-mixed greenhouse gases, and in particular carbon dioxide, appear to be the dominant mechanism. However, there are considerable uncertainties in our estimates of many other forcing mechanisms; those associated with the so-called indirect aerosol forcing (whereby changes in aerosols can impact on cloud properties) may be the most serious, as its climatic effect may be of a similar size as, but opposite sign to, that due to carbon dioxide. The possible role of volcanic eruptions as a natural climate change mechanism is also highlighted.

/pdf/radiative-forcing-of-climate-change-28f4rvm6wz.pdf

Radiative Forcing of Climate Change

Carbonaceous soot within the troposphere can significantly modify the clear-sky radiative forcing. Using an extension to a simple radiation calculation and two model-derived sulfate aerosol data sets, the impact of an assumed soot/sulfate mass ratio of between 0.05 and 0.1 is examined. Fossil fuel derived soot causes a positive global-mean radiative forcing which for one data set ranges from +0.03 to +0.24Wm−2; the lower estimate is for an external mixture with a soot/sulfate ratio of 0.05 and the upper estimate is for an internal mixture and a soot/sulfate ratio of 0.10. These values compare to a global-mean radiative forcing of −0.34Wm−2 due to sulfate aerosol. Soot also significantly reduces the interhemispherical difference in the radiative forcing due to sulfate aerosol. The nature and amount of soot must be well established if the climatic role of tropospheric aerosols is to be fully understood.

Keith P. Shine

Papers

The intergovernmental panel on climate change

On the “Downward Control” of Extratropical Diabatic Circulations by Eddy-Induced Mean Zonal Forces

New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases

Radiative Forcing of Climate Change

The effect of anthropogenic sulfate and soot aerosol on the clear sky planetary radiation budget