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An emissions‐based view of climate forcing by methane and tropospheric ozone
Author(s) -
Shindell Drew T.,
Faluvegi Greg,
Bell Nadine,
Schmidt Gavin A.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2004gl021900
Subject(s) - radiative forcing , methane , atmospheric sciences , tropospheric ozone , ozone , environmental science , forcing (mathematics) , troposphere , climatology , greenhouse gas , climate model , climate change , aerosol , meteorology , chemistry , physics , geology , oceanography , organic chemistry
We simulate atmospheric composition changes in response to increased methane and tropospheric ozone precursor emissions from the preindustrial to present‐day in a coupled chemistry‐aerosol‐climate model. The global annual average composition response to all emission changes is within 10% of the sum of the responses to individual emissions types, a more policy‐relevant quantity. This small non‐linearity between emission types permits attribution of past global mean methane and ozone radiative forcings to specific emissions despite the well‐known non‐linear response to emissions of a single type. The emissions‐based view indicates that methane emissions have contributed a forcing of ∼0.8–0.9 W m −2 , nearly double the abundance‐based value, while the forcing from other ozone precursors has been quite small (∼−0.1 for NO x , ∼0.2 for CO + VOCs).