Quantification of temperature response to CO2 forcing in atmosphere–ocean general circulation models

Abstract

The present study establishes a general formulation to represent the behavior and variation of an ensemble of complex climate models in terms of the global mean surface temperature response to atmospheric CO2 increase. The response parameters of this formulation provide a set of metrics that extends the conventional concept of climate sensitivity and quantifies transient temperature changes with sufficient simplicity and transparency to serve studies on climate change mitigation. Two commonly used metrics for transient and equilibrium climate sensitivity are analytically derived from the formulation, such that conventional estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity based on standard numerical experiments for quadrupling CO2 increase are properly scaled down to the reference level of doubling CO2. The characteristics and variations of a specific ensemble of complex climate models can be simulated with a statistical model built using the principal components (PCs) of the response parameters. This approach is applied to the probabilistic assessment of temperature changes as well as to the diagnosis of the base ensemble. In current complex climate models, the ratio of transient-to-equilibrium sensitivity decreases with an increase of equilibrium sensitivity, as identified in variations associated with two specific PCs that characterize coherence between transient temperature response and properties of heat uptake by the ocean.