How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes?

Processes in the climate system that can either amplify or dampen the climate response to an external perturbation are referred to as climate feedbacks. Climate sensitivity estimates depend critically on radiative feedbacks associated with water vapor, lapse rate, clouds, snow, and sea ice, and global estimates of these feedbacks differ among general circulation models. By reviewing recent observational, numerical, and theoretical studies, this paper shows that there has been progress since the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in (i) the understanding of the physical mechanisms involved in these feedbacks, (ii) the interpretation of intermodel differences in global estimates of these feedbacks, and (iii) the development of methodologies of evaluation of these feedbacks (or of some components) using observations. This suggests that continuing developments in climate feedback research will progressively help make it possible to constrain the GCMs’ range of climate feedbacks and climate sensitivity through an ensemble of diagnostics based on physical understanding and observations.

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Copyright 2006 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license form the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org.
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Author Bony, Sandrine
Colman, Robert
Kattsov, Vladimir
Allan, Richard
Bretherton, Christopher
Dufresne, Jean-Louis
Hall, Alex
Hallegatte, Stephane
Holland, Marika
Ingram, William
Randall, David
Soden, Brian
Tselioudis, George
Webb, Mark
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2006-08-01T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
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Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
Progress N/A
Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:22:13.507569
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:10233
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Bony, Sandrine, Colman, Robert, Kattsov, Vladimir, Allan, Richard, Bretherton, Christopher, Dufresne, Jean-Louis, Hall, Alex, Hallegatte, Stephane, Holland, Marika, Ingram, William, Randall, David, Soden, Brian, Tselioudis, George, Webb, Mark. (2006). How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes?. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d77s7p96. Accessed 16 June 2025.

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