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Ken Caldeira Freitag 25 Januar, 11:00 (s.t.) Raum C106: Fast and slow climate responses to climate forcing

24.01.2019  Bastos, A.

 

Two opposing trends in climate science are the tendency to view the climate system as fundamentally non-linear, replete with tipping points and metastability, and the tendency to view the climate system as fundamentally linear, with climate response varying quasi-linearly with the amount of climate forcing. In 2004, Jonathan Gregory and colleagues made a major advance, proposing a new linear methodology for decomposing the response of the climate system into two components: the first component is governed by the specific characteristics of the climate forcing (e.g., CO2, aerosols, land-cover change) and the second component is governed by changes in global mean temperature, independent of the specific characteristics of the climate forcing. In recent years, this linear analysis has been giving way to increased appreciation of the role of non-linearities in the system. This talk will discuss some of our work using Gregory's framework, and discuss the insights and limitations associated with this methodology.


Ken works at the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution in Stanford. His work involves an amazing variety of topics, from field experiments on ocean acidification and Earth system modeling to energy technology and policy. More on his current activities: https://www-legacy.dge.carnegiescience.edu/labs/caldeiralab/