Identification

Title

Evaluating global warming potentials with historical temperature

Abstract

Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) are evaluated with historical temperature by applying them to convert historical CH₄ and N₂O emissions to equivalent CO₂ emissions. Our GWP analysis is based on an inverse estimation using the Aggregated Carbon Cycle, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Climate Model (ACC2). We find that, for both CH₄ and N₂O, indices higher than the Kyoto GWPs (100-year time horizon) would reproduce better the historical temperature. The CH4 GWP provides a best fit to the historical temperature when it is calculated with a time horizon of 44 years. However, the N₂O GWP does not approximate well the historical temperature with any time horizon. We introduce a new exchange metric, TEMperature Proxy index (TEMP), that is defined so that it provides a best fit to the temperature projection of a given period. By comparing GWPs and TEMPs, we find that the inability of the N₂O GWP to reproduce the historical temperature is caused by the GWP calculation methodology in IPCC using simplifying assumptions for the background system dynamics and uncertain parameter estimations. Furthermore, our TEMP calculations demonstrate that indices have to be progressively updated upon the acquisition of new measurements and/or the advancement of our understanding of Earth system processes.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7hd7wqr

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2009-10-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

An edited version of this paper was published by Springer. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact