On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from
Variations in Earth's Radiant Energy Balance
Roy W. Spencer * and William D. Braswell
ESSC-UAH, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Cramer Hall, Huntsville,
AL 35899, USA;
E-Mail:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
;
Tel.: +1-256-961-7960; Fax: +1-256-961-7751.
Received: 24 May 2011; in revised form: 13 July 2011 / Accepted: 15 July
2011 /
Published: 25 July 2011

Abstract: The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative
imbalance remains the largest source of uncertainty in projections of
future anthropogenic climate change.
Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an
observational perspective is largely due to the masking of the radiative
feedback signal by internal radiative forcing, probably due to natural
cloud variations. That these internal radiative forcings exist and
likely corrupt feedback diagnosis is demonstrated with lag regression
analysis of satellite and coupled climate model data, interpreted with a
simple forcing-feedback model. While the satellite-based metrics for the
period 2000-2010 depart substantially in the direction of
lower climate sensitivity from those similarly computed from coupled
climate models, we find that, with traditional methods, it is not
possible to accurately quantify this discrepancy in terms of the
feedbacks which determine climate sensitivity. It is concluded that
atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved
problem, due primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative
forcing and radiative feedback in satellite radiative budget
observations.



http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf

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