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Carbon Dioxide and Climate: Perspectives on a Scientific Assessment

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Climate Science for Serving Society

Abstract

Many of the findings of the Charney Report on CO2-induced climate change published in 1979 are still valid, even after 30 additional years of climate research and observations. This paper considers the reasons why the report was so prescient, and assesses the progress achieved since its publication. We suggest that emphasis on the importance of physical understanding gained through the use of theory and simple models, both in isolation and as an aid in the interpretation of the results of General Circulation Models, provided much of the authors’ insight at the time. Increased emphasis on these aspects of research is likely to continue to be productive in the future, and even to constitute one of the most efficient routes towards improved climate change assessments.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Hervé Le Treut and Amy Dahan-Dalmedico for valuable comments and discussions with who helped us put the discussions of this opinion paper into an historical context. We are grateful to V. Ramaswamy, two anonymous reviewers and several participants of the WCRP Open Science Conference (Denver, CO, October 2011) for thorough comments and suggestions that helped improve the manuscript. This paper was supported by the French ANR project ClimaConf.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/IPSL, CNRS, Pierre & Marie Curie University, 99, 4 place Jussieu, Paris, 75252, France

    Sandrine Bony & Jean-Louis Dufresne

  2. Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 20146, Germany

    Bjorn Stevens

  3. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University, 201 Forrestal Road, Princeton, NJ, 08540-6649, USA

    Isaac H. Held & Stephen Griffies

  4. MetOffice/Hadley Center, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, Devon, EX1 3PB, UK

    John F. Mitchell & Catherine Senior

  5. Massachusetts Institute for Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 02139, MA, USA

    Kerry A. Emanuel

  6. College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Harrison Building, Streatham Campus, North Park Road, Exeter, EX4 4QF, UK

    Pierre Friedlingstein

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  1. Sandrine Bony
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  2. Bjorn Stevens
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  3. Isaac H. Held
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  4. John F. Mitchell
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  5. Jean-Louis Dufresne
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  6. Kerry A. Emanuel
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  7. Pierre Friedlingstein
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  8. Stephen Griffies
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  9. Catherine Senior
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Correspondence to Sandrine Bony .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. World Climate Research Programme, World Meteorological Organization, bis, Avenue de la Paix 7, Geneva 2, 1211, Switzerland

    Ghassem R. Asrar

  2. Earth System Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Center Green Drive 3090, Boulder, 80301, Colorado, USA

    James W. Hurrell

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Bony, S. et al. (2013). Carbon Dioxide and Climate: Perspectives on a Scientific Assessment. In: Asrar, G., Hurrell, J. (eds) Climate Science for Serving Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6692-1_14

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