Open AccessAssessing “global warming” with surface heat content
Author(s) -
Pielke Roger A.,
Davey Christopher,
Morgan Jack
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2004eo210004
Subject(s) - global warming , climate change , environmental science , climatology , metric (unit) , atmospheric sciences , air temperature , meteorology , geography , geology , engineering , operations management , oceanography
Although climate change and variability involves all aspects of the climate system [ Pielke , 1998],the assessment of anthropogenically‐forced climate change has focused on surface temperature as the primary metric [ Mann and Jones , 2003; Soon et al. , 2004]. Our contribution only addresses this very specific (and limited) metric of the climate system. The term “global warming” has been used to describe the observed surface air temperature increase in the 20th century. However, this concept of “global warming” requires assessments of units of heat (that is, Joules). Temperature, by itself, is an incomplete characterization of surface air heat content.