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Climate Science for Serving Society pp 415–436Cite as

Atmospheric Composition, Irreversible Climate Change, and Mitigation Policy

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Abstract

The Earth’s atmosphere is changing due to anthropogenic increases of gases and aerosols that influence the planetary energy budget. Policy has long been challenged to ensure that instruments such as the Kyoto Protocol or carbon trading deal with the wide range of lifetimes of these radiative forcing agents. Recent research has sharpened scientific understanding of how climate system time scales interact with the time scales of the forcing agents themselves. This has led to an improved understanding of metrics used to compare different forcing agents, and has prompted consideration of new metrics such as cumulative carbon. Research has also clarified the understanding that short-lived forcing agents can “trim the peak” of coming climate change, while long-lived agents, especially carbon dioxide, will be responsible for at least a millennium of elevated temperatures and altered climate, even if emissions were to cease. We suggest that these vastly differing characteristics imply that a single basket for trading among forcing agents is incompatible with current scientific understanding.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Radiative forcing is defined (e.g., IPCC 2007) as the change in the net irradiance (downward minus upward, generally expressed in W m−2) at the tropopause due to a change in an external driver of the Earth’s energy budget, such as, for example, a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide.

  2. 2.

    The parameters we use in the following are: μdeep = 20, μmix = 200 J/m2 K and γ = λ = 2 W/m2 K.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Av, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Susan Solomon

  2. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA

    Susan Solomon

  3. Department of the Geophysical Sciences, The University of Chicago, 5734 S. Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Raymond T. Pierrehumbert

  4. Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8, Canada

    Damon Matthews

  5. Chemical Sciences Division, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, 325 Broadway, R/CSD2, Boulder, CO, 80305, USA

    John S. Daniel

  6. College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Harrison Building, Streatham Campus, North Park Road, Exeter, EX4 4QF, UK

    Pierre Friedlingstein

Authors
  1. Susan Solomon
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  2. Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
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  3. Damon Matthews
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  4. John S. Daniel
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  5. Pierre Friedlingstein
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Correspondence to Susan Solomon .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. World Climate Research Programme, World Meteorological Organization, bis, Avenue de la Paix 7, Geneva 2, 1211, Switzerland

    Ghassem R. Asrar

  2. Earth System Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Center Green Drive 3090, Boulder, 80301, Colorado, USA

    James W. Hurrell

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Solomon, S., Pierrehumbert, R.T., Matthews, D., Daniel, J.S., Friedlingstein, P. (2013). Atmospheric Composition, Irreversible Climate Change, and Mitigation Policy. In: Asrar, G., Hurrell, J. (eds) Climate Science for Serving Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6692-1_15

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