Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Influence of non-feedback variations of radiation on the determination of climate feedback

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Theoretical and Applied Climatology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Recent studies have estimated the magnitude of climate feedback based on the correlation between time variations in outgoing radiation flux and sea surface temperature (SST). This study investigates the influence of the natural non-feedback variation (noise) of the flux occurring independently of SST on the determination of climate feedback. The observed global monthly radiation flux is used from the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) for the period 2000–2008. In the observations, the time lag correlation of radiation and SST shows a distorted curve with low statistical significance for shortwave radiation while a significant maximum at zero lag for longwave radiation over the tropics. This observational feature is explained by simulations with an idealized energy balance model where we see that the non-feedback variation plays the most significant role in distorting the curve in the lagged correlation graph, thus obscuring the exact value of climate feedback. We also demonstrate that the climate feedback from the tropical longwave radiation in the CERES data is not significantly affected by the noise. We further estimate the standard deviation of radiative forcings (mainly from the noise) relative to that of the non-radiative forcings, i.e., the noise level from the observations and atmosphere–ocean coupled climate model simulations in the framework of the simple model. The estimated noise levels in both CERES (>13 %) and climate models (11–28 %) are found to be far above the critical level (~5 %) that begins to misrepresent climate feedback.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Lindzen and Choi (2011) stated that the variances of F rad and F non are 0.7, and 5, respectively. However, they were meant to be standard deviations, i.e., σ(F rad) = 0.7, and σ(F non) = 5.

References

  • Cho H, Ho CH, Choi YS (2012) The observed variation in cloud-induced longwave radiation in response to sea surface temperature over the Pacific warm pool from MTSAT-1R imagery. Geophys Res Lett 39:L18802

    Google Scholar 

  • Choi YS, Song HJ (2012) On the numerical integration of a randomly forced system: variation and feedback estimation. Theor Appl Climatol 110:97–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choi YS, Lindzen RS, Ho CH, Kim J (2010) Space observations of cold-cloud phase change. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:11211–11216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chung ES, Soden BJ, Sohn BJ (2010) Revisiting the determination of climate sensitivity from relationships between surface temperature and radiative fluxes. Geophys Res Lett 37:L10703

    Google Scholar 

  • Colman R (2003) A comparison of climate feedbacks in general circulation models. Clim Dyn 20:865–873

    Google Scholar 

  • Dessler AE (2011) Cloud variations and the Earth’s energy budget. Geophys Res Lett 38

  • Forster PM, Gregory JM (2006) The climate sensitivity and its components diagnosed from Earth Radiation Budget data. J Clim 19:39–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frankignoul C (1999) A cautionary note on the use of statistical atmospheric models in the middle latitudes: comments on ‘decadal variability in the North Pacific as simulated by a hybrid coupled model’. J Clim 12:1871–1872

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frankignoul C, Czaja A, L’Heveder B (1998) Air–sea feedback in the North Atlantic and surface boundary conditions for ocean models. J Clim 11:2310–2324

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gregory J, Webb M (2008) Tropospheric adjustment induces a cloud component in CO2 forcing. J Clim 21:58–71

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2007) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Knutti R, Hegerl GC (2008) The equilibrium sensitivity of the Earth’s temperature to radiation changes. Nat Geosci 1:735–743

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin B, Min Q, Sun W, Hu Y, Fan TF (2011) Can climate sensitivity be estimated from short-term relationships of top-of-atmosphere net radiation and surface temperature? J Quant Spectrosc Radiat Transf 112:177–181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindzen RS, Choi YS (2009) On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data. Geophys Res Lett 36:L16705

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindzen RS, Choi YS (2011) On the observational determination of climate sensitivity and its implications. Asia-Pacific J Atmos Sci 47:377–390

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manabe S, Bryan K, Spelman MJ (1990) Transient response of a global ocean–atmosphere model to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. J Phys Ocean 20:722–749

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murphy DM (2010) Constraining climate sensitivity with linear fits to outgoing radiation. Geophys Res Lett 37:L09704

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roe GH, Baker MB (2007) Why is climate sensitivity so unpredictable? Science 318:629–632

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz ES (2007) Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system. J Geophys Res 112:D24S05

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soden BJ, Held IM (2006) An assessment of climate feedbacks in coupled ocean–atmosphere models. J Clim 19:3354–3360

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spencer RW, Braswell WD (2010) On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing. J Geophys Res 115:D16109

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spencer RW, Braswell WD (2011) On the misdiagnosis of surface temperature feedbacks from variations in Earth’s radiant energy balance. Remote Sens 3:1603–1613

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trenberth KE, Fasullo JT, O’Dell C, Wong T (2010) Relationships between tropical sea surface temperature and top-of-atmosphere radiation. Geophys Res Lett 37:L03702

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wielicki BA, Barkstrom BR, Baum BA, Charlock TP, Green RN, Kratz DP, Lee RB, Minnis P, Smith GL, Wong T, Young DF, The CERES, Team S (1998) Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES): algorithm overview. IEEE Trans Geosci Remote Sens 36:1127–1141

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

This study is supported by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under grant CATER 2012–3064 and by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (2009-83527).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Ewha Womans University, Daehyeon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, 120-750, Korea

    Yong-Sang Choi & Seon Ki Park

  2. Computational Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Heeje Cho & Chang-Hoi Ho

  3. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Chang-Hoi Ho

  4. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Richard S. Lindzen

  5. Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Xing Yu

Authors
  1. Yong-Sang Choi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Heeje Cho
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Chang-Hoi Ho
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Richard S. Lindzen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Seon Ki Park
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Xing Yu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yong-Sang Choi.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Choi, YS., Cho, H., Ho, CH. et al. Influence of non-feedback variations of radiation on the determination of climate feedback. Theor Appl Climatol 115, 355–364 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-013-0998-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-013-0998-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation