SLCFs – Climate Response to Short-lived Climate Forcers
Activity leaders:
Bill Collins
University of Reading
Activity description:
The route from emission of a short-lived pollutant to climate impact involves a chain of many processes and spans many academic fields (gas-phase and heterogeneous-phase chemistry, aerosol physics, cloud physics, climate dynamics). This activity will focus on the last of these, the climate response to a given forcing.
The main scientific questions addressed by this activity are:
- How does the atmosphere adjust to changes in short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), and what is the contribution of these rapid adjustments on the effective radiative forcing (ERF)?
- How does the climate respond to different patterns of these ERFs?
- Is the global climate sensitivity the same as for CO2?
- Does the climate respond on the same timescales as for a CO2 forcing?
- How does the spatial pattern of the response relate to the spatial pattern of the forcing?