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Since Forcing is used as ∆F, it should be fined as earth's radiative energy loss to space in reference to some base condition. This could be the pre-industrial CO2 levels, or present 400 ppm CO2 level, or earth's blackbody radiation at current average surface temperature, for examples. The listing of GHG's excludes H2O vapor, which has the greatest effect on forcing.
I can demonstrate, using ModTran5, that 1.) the constant λ varies with cloud conditions and 2.) has a value of 0.7 C/watts-m^2 with 0.017 C/watts-m^2 std. dev, corresponding to climate sensitivity (400 ppm to 800 ppm) of 0.70C with 0.075 C std. dev. The effect of increased water vapor pressure adds about 0.10 C to climate sensitivity. Czorba ( talk) 00:24, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
The IPCC definition requires behavior which is different than what is presently known. Douglas Hoyt and Peter Dietze independently point out that a theory which considers the radiative effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide as only a reduction within carbon dioxide's absorption frequency does not include induced changes in radiation from other frequencies. Other materials will be caused to increase their radiation rate. The IPCC estimates the radiation flux decrease at 3.5, while these estimates are significantly less, with one at 1.3 watts per square meter and the other has a range of 1.4 to 1.9. The smaller decreases indicate less warming.
( George2wiki ( talk) 20:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)) Changing it to this might help clarify the problem:
The IPCC definition violates Conservation of Energy by counting energy more than once. Energy is counted as 'forcing' both as it arrives from the Sun and as surface energy captured by greenhouse gases is re-radiated back to the surface. Only any direct effect CO2 might have on the albedo can be considered a 'forcing' influence. This is why some models predict runaway warming and very large temperature increases.
What is so wrong with the above that they were removed? SEWilco 16:42, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Why William M. Connolley´s technical statements in Wikipedia´s pages are not removed when they are wrong?
( William M. Connolley 20:24, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)) There are two possible things you might be worried about. One is the IPCC defn or radiative forcing. The other is the reliability of the radiation codes used in GCMs. I don't know which: you need to say. They are quite separate however. Hoyt appears to be mixing the two up. But at least he has got rid of that stupid picture.
( SEWilco 08:33, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)) A positive forcing tends to warm while a negative forcing tends to cooling. What's wrong with saying that forcing occurs to what is under the point at which it is measured? I know that forcing happens whether it is measured or not. And overall forcing actually happens for everything within the atmosphere, although some things only happen in certain vertical or geographical regions. But merely saying that positive forcing warms something is ambiguous -- does it warm only the surface, troposphere, clouds, or the Moon? There should be phrasing which indicates what is affected by forcing.
( George2wiki ( talk) 20:50, 15 April 2009 (UTC)) Forcing means something that effects the energy entering the system. Greenhouse gases only influence the response of the system to that forcing influence. The Earth is in energy equilibrium, where the energy radiated by the planet is equal to the energy arriving from the Sun, independent of the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases affect the system response by deferring the re-radiation of incident solar energy and do not trap it forever or add new energy to the system. The time constant of this delay, relative to CO2, is evidenced by the rate of radiation cooling on a clear, dry winter night.
I'd like more information about clouds in this article. I've read some laymen's treatments suggesting that variations in the sun's output affect cloud cover, which in turn affects how much sunlight warms the earth's surface. White stuff reflects not just visible light but infrared too.
Where in Wikipedia is there information on factors affecting cloud formation? I'm intersted in the following:
I dimly recall some papers linking variations in the solar cycle length to terrestial temperature. Did those papers mention a forcing? Dr. C., please comment. -- Uncle Ed 01:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
The image "Radiative Forcings" is too small in the aricle to be useful. The image expand button brings up an image maintenance page lacking a caption, and revealing a background pattern in the image having to do with maintenance.
Wikipedia needs to change its policy of relying on the image mainenance page for the end user's expanded view. The expanded view must be part of the article content. It must retain the text caption from the article and allow for further caption detail, and allow for a third level of image size expansion.
The discussion on the image page is very good. -- Rtdrury 21:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
"the net effect of these feedback mechanisms is to amplify temperature increases CO2, roughly by a factor of two in most models."
Should this read "the net effect...is to amplify THE temperature increase DUE TO CO2, roughly by a factor of two..." Or perhaps something like "The net effect of adding these feedbacks roughly doubles the temperature increase due to atmospheric CO2." Todd Johnston 22:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I recommend changing "radiation energy" to "radiant energy," unless that would change the meaning. D021317c 05:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Rather than editing the following text, I'd like to nit-pick about it:
"In climate science, radiative forcing is (loosely) defined as the difference between the incoming radiation energy and the outgoing radiation energy in a given climate system. A positive forcing (more incoming energy) tends to warm the system, while a negative forcing (more outgoing energy) tends to cool it. Possible sources of radiative forcing are changes in insolation (incident solar radiation), or the effects of variations in the amount of radiatively active gases present."
"Loosely," assuming it belongs there, doesn't require parentheses. The "difference" referred to might be better characterized as that between the amounts of radiant energy entering and leaving the system. "System" ought to be given a link to the thermodynamic usage of the term ("closed system"). "Given" and "climate" are unnecessary. "A" implies that "forcings" are countable things, an unnecessary complication. I'd prefer "Positive forcing tends to warm the system; negative forcing tends to cool it." The "while" is unnecessary, and may suggest, at first glance, that the two kinds of forcing must occur simultaneously, which is probably false.
Unless one is considering changes in radiative forcing (or I misunderstand the term itself), "changes" and "variations" are inappropriate. In other words, when forcing is constant, isn't it wrong to attribute it to changes of any sort?
"Sources," it seems to me, is being wrongly used to mean "causes." Only two are given, and I suspect that both are possible (either separately or together), so "or" should be changed to "and." I wonder whether it is actually wrong to say that one cause may be (1) "variations in the amount of radiatively active gases present," (2) "the amount of radiatively active gases present," (3) "radiatively active gases present," or even (4) radiatively active gases," -- as opposed to the "effects" thereof, and if so, what sort of effects they might be.
Finally, "insolation" and "radiatively active," it seems to me, deserve links of their own.
D021317c 06:19, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Isn't radiative forcing a real phenomenon? Assuming it is, how can one say it "is intended" somehow? Or that it's "a useful way" to do something? Or that it's comparable to "possible tools" which "can be constructed"? We don't speak of gravity or clouds that way. D021317c 06:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Hello i have recently proposed the Wikiproject Earth. This Wikiproject`s scope includes this article. This wikiproject will overview the continents, oceans, atsmophere and global warming Please Voice your opinion by clicking anywhere on this comment except for my name. -- Iwilleditu Talk :) Contributions —Preceding comment was added at 15:36, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
The first sentence uses the term irradiance properly to describe incoming power. The second sentence talks about (net) irradiance as energy. This is a basic (sophmoric) misuse of terms. I just don't understand how such blatant errors get into articles, and manage to stay in them. Where are the critical thinkers/observers? blackcloak ( talk) 06:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
"radiance" is joules/energy per m2 per second, or watts/power per m2. if you switch to joules/energy per m2 the relevant term is "fluence". But, you know, not everyone knows the term "fluence" and I think it reads OK as it is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.209.162.219 ( talk) 11:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think the climatologists who came up with the term "radiative forcing" were just making up a natural-language phrase to refer to sunlight. I think they were talking about something in the math that's an instance of a more general concept of forcing in some branch of mathematics. But I don't know whether the concept is best described as forcing (dynamical systems) or forcing (differential equations) or forcing (physics) or forcing function or something else. Here are a couple references to the term in other mathematical contexts [1] [2]. Currently, forcing function is a disambiguation page with only one link, which is to something unrelated.
Based on those, my inclination is to create forcing function (differential equations), and have the lead in this article begin In climate science, radiative forcing is (loosely) defined as the change in net irradiance at the tropopause. But I don't know whether making part of the main term into a link is acceptable style, and I have too many pages open already about this. For now I'll go ahead and create forcing function (differential equations) . -- Dan Wylie-Sears 2 ( talk) 20:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I added the modtran image. Perhaps the captions should be expanded, for example to identify the Planck curves. Incredio ( talk) 05:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
The page says "where λ is the climate sensitivity, usually with units in K/(W/m2)", surely by the definition given it always has to have these units? Ezshay ( talk) 15:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
So, we have a variety of anons - presumably the same person - adding this [3]. Anybody like it? dT = l dF is the *defn* of radiative forcing [4] so can't be wrong. I don't quite know what the anon is trying to say William M. Connolley ( talk) 21:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
"2. Estimates of climate sensitivity using real global mean temperature variations are consistent with those using output data from the 20c3m IPCC AR4 model runs. There is no inconsistency between the model climate sensitivities and the observed global mean temperature decorrelation timescales, as claimed by Schwartz (2007).
...
4. The large variability of the estimated climate sensitivity derived from these runs, even for multiple runs of the same model, confirms our prediction that estimation of climate sensitivity from a time series of a single variable requires much longer climate records than exist for the real world."
Carbon Dioxide accounts, typically, for less than HALF the radiative forcing of water vapor, yet the chart doesn't even list the latter. It is therefore so grossly inaccurate that it needs to be replaced. -- Kaz ( talk) 12:55, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
The figure of figure file 'Physical_Drivers_of_climate_change.svg', with a caption 'Radiative forcings, IPCC 2021' is incorrect. I meant to upload the correct figure which is Fig. 7.7 of Chpater 7 of ICCP's AR6, Working Group I (go to https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/), however, i abandoned my attempt as this is not my own work, i just took a screenshot from the Report. The most glaring inaccuracy is the contribution of methane. I suppose that this mistake was created in the process of recreating the diagram out of necessity to circumvent copyright issues. It's a pity that because of copyright issues, such errors are generated. Otherwise, I don't get why someone wanted to include in this place a figure of "warming contributions" (for which reason the caption 'Radiative forcings, IPCC 2021' is inaccurate, misleading). This is a page about radiative forcing and perhaps the pertinent figure of the said AR6 chapter is rather Fig. 7.6. However, that is showing what they call the 'Effective radiative forcing' (ERF), which concept i myself don't yet understand. May i mention that i managed to reproduce quite accurately Fig. 7.7 of Chpater 7 of AR6 using the formulae of Table 6.2 of the TAR report ( https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar3/wg1/) as for the five GHGs included in there. So, the present figure file is definitely incorrect wrt. methane. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bodait ( talk • contribs) 13:06, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
Someone ought to add an entry for this use of force at the disambiguation page - sorry, I have no idea of the proper format myself. (Or of the parameters in radiation physics in which the terms force or forcing are appropriately applied.) Milkunderwood ( talk) 00:53, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
99.181.130.240 ( talk) 03:51, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
The answer is Geoffrey.landis, I'm sorry to say [8] William M. Connolley ( talk) 10:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
The table summarizing global radiative forcing does not include water. Given that water is a pretty important greenhouse gas, this would seem to be a glaring omission. Were water to be included, the statement " CO2 dominates the total forcing" would be patently false. The greenhouse effect and the impacts of increasing CO2 are well understood scientific phenomena. Rigging a table to make the effect of CO2 seem larger than it is will only serve the sky dragons. For those not familiar with the term, those are people who state that CO2 has no impact on climate. I realize that the source for this is NOAA and that their site is the source for the table as is, but just because it is a "Reliable Source" doesn't mean it should be included without question. At least a note concerning the fact that the table does not include water. While I'm at it, why is this a climate centric page? Climate is only one of the many fields that look at radiative forcing. Hottel was quantifying the effects of CO2 and H2O in the 1940's, long before anyone cared about climate change. I will not make any changes to this page myself. Too many bad stories about edit wars in anything to do with climate. John G Eggert ( talk) 21:20, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
Water wapor is certainly a very effective greenhouse gas. It is, however, not considered a radiative forcing but a feedback caused by the changes in atmospheric temperature. If for instance the climate is forced by a 1 W/m2 increase in solar irradiance the lower troposphere begins to warm. Therefore it can contain more water wapor which will cause the temperature to increase even more. Torben.schmith ( talk) 20:13, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
References
The article starts out with "In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing, is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space." That's a commendably clear and understandable definition.
Unfortunately it is not remotely like the definition provided by AR5, which (a) references the concept to 1750 (per p.13 of AR5 WG1's Summary for Policymakers, or see the official definition in the Glossary on p.1460) and (b) classifies forcings according to their several causes (Figure SPM.5 on p.14).
Would someone please propose either a plausible interpretation of this sentence for which 1750 would be a relevant date and that furthermore explains how "the" climate forcing thus defined can be apportioned between causes, or (better yet) a reliable source reconciling the two definitions? Otherwise I'm going to flag the offending sentence with a cn tag. Vaughan Pratt ( talk) 05:05, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
* Hear, hear!! This article uses the term that it is supposed to define ("radiative forcing") in different ways at different places. This needs to be fixed. L. Hinkelman, 6/17/2015
The graphic labeled "Radiative Forcing Components" is incorrectly labeled. The graphic shows anomalous changes in radiative forcings--- two completely different things. Eight out of the nine anomalous changes are due to humans. The graphic needs its label changed to reflect the fact that it shows anomalous changes in radiative forcings. It correctly lists all known forcings (which is its function), but the scale is wrong: it shows anomalies, not the entire watts per square meter per forcing. The word "anomalous" needs to be added. -- Desertphile ( talk) 19:46, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Presently, the first sentence of the intro reads:
”In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space”
However, what is described here is not the climate forcing, but the the radiative balance, which is the sum of the climate forcing and the radiative feedback
Some days ago, I changes the sentence to:
” In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing is defined as the change in downward energy flux caused by natural or anthropogenic drivers of climate change relative to a reference state in which climate is assumed to be in radiative balance. ”
This is indeed, what is described in the presentation by Drew Shindell (sheet no. 3) referred to at the end of the sentence
I also removed the illustration, since it illustrates incoming shortwave radiation and not climate forcing.
For unknown reasons, my editing was reverted the following day. I would encourage argumentation for why this was done.
Best regards
Torben.schmith ( talk) 21:42, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Senior scientist, Danish Meteorological Institute
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Can the table in the article be removed? I could improve & update the figure related to this table. I assume people have painstakingly put effort into making this table, but I don't see the added value. Femke Nijsse ( talk) 13:55, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
There is no text in this section, so it is a little difficult to interpret the graphs. However, it appears that the absiccias are incorrectly labeled "wavenumber (1/cm)" instead of wavelength (nm). I can't imagine the far infrared is relevant to this page. Bad-zima ( talk) 21:49, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Could this content about other metrics be condensed? It feels very long winded to me and I don't really see what the long quote is trying to say. It might also be outdated or no longer so important to warrant this much space here?
+++++++
Other metrics can be constructed for the same purpose as radiative forcing. For example Shine et al. [1] say "... recent experiments indicate that for changes in absorbing aerosols and ozone, the predictive ability of radiative forcing is much worse ... we propose an alternative, the 'adjusted troposphere and stratosphere forcing'. We present GCM calculations showing that it is a significantly more reliable predictor of this GCM's surface temperature change than radiative forcing. It is a candidate to supplement radiative forcing as a metric for comparing different mechanisms ...". In this quote, GCM stands for " global circulation model", and the word "predictive" does not refer to the ability of GCMs to forecast climate change. Instead, it refers to the ability of the alternative tool proposed by the authors to help explain the system response.
+++++++
EMsmile ( talk) 20:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
References
EMsmile ( talk) 20:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
I have some doubts about the "Radiation balance" section: It's not clear to me why it is at this position in the article; doesn't it just repeat a lot of content (including 3 graphs!) that are in greenhouse effect? The text has no sources, maybe it's textbook knowledge and doesn't need sources. Also, it says there "main": Earth's energy budget then why not rather use an excerpt from there? Or use an excerpt from greenhouse effect? This way we could reduce the amount of overlapping content. EMsmile ( talk) 20:33, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
It would be good if the structure of the article could be clearer, which could be achieved by using standard headings. So far, the structure (table of content) is this:
Definition - OK for standard heading Radiation balance - Unclear as a heading - update: now removed EMsmile ( talk) 21:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC) Basic estimates - OK for standard heading Recent growth trends - OK for standard heading Direct observation - OK for standard heading Climate sensitivity - Unclear as a heading - update: now removed and integrated further above. EMsmile ( talk) 16:39, 17 January 2024 (UTC) Related metrics - OK for standard heading
EMsmile ( talk) 20:36, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Definition and fundamentals Calculations and measurements Forcing due to changes in atmospheric gases Forcing due to changes in solar irradiance Forcing due to changes in albedo and aerosols Recent growth trends EMsmile ( talk) 16:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
I am a bit confused where the negative radiative forcing content (i.e. aerosols) should be placed and how we should interlink best with the global dimming or the particulates article. So far, aerosols is only mentioned in passing here and there. Should it rather be in the section on "Forcing due to changes in atmospheric gases" or in "Forcing due to changes in albedo and aerosols"? and if so, how and with what detail, without creating overlap and repetition. Maybe use an excerpt? Pinging User:InformationToKnowledge as they are currently working on global dimming. EMsmile ( talk) 16:59, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
I like the generic section of "uses" but I am just wondering if there are other possible uses that we could list, or is climate sensitivity really the only one? EMsmile ( talk) 21:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
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Since Forcing is used as ∆F, it should be fined as earth's radiative energy loss to space in reference to some base condition. This could be the pre-industrial CO2 levels, or present 400 ppm CO2 level, or earth's blackbody radiation at current average surface temperature, for examples. The listing of GHG's excludes H2O vapor, which has the greatest effect on forcing.
I can demonstrate, using ModTran5, that 1.) the constant λ varies with cloud conditions and 2.) has a value of 0.7 C/watts-m^2 with 0.017 C/watts-m^2 std. dev, corresponding to climate sensitivity (400 ppm to 800 ppm) of 0.70C with 0.075 C std. dev. The effect of increased water vapor pressure adds about 0.10 C to climate sensitivity. Czorba ( talk) 00:24, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
The IPCC definition requires behavior which is different than what is presently known. Douglas Hoyt and Peter Dietze independently point out that a theory which considers the radiative effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide as only a reduction within carbon dioxide's absorption frequency does not include induced changes in radiation from other frequencies. Other materials will be caused to increase their radiation rate. The IPCC estimates the radiation flux decrease at 3.5, while these estimates are significantly less, with one at 1.3 watts per square meter and the other has a range of 1.4 to 1.9. The smaller decreases indicate less warming.
( George2wiki ( talk) 20:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)) Changing it to this might help clarify the problem:
The IPCC definition violates Conservation of Energy by counting energy more than once. Energy is counted as 'forcing' both as it arrives from the Sun and as surface energy captured by greenhouse gases is re-radiated back to the surface. Only any direct effect CO2 might have on the albedo can be considered a 'forcing' influence. This is why some models predict runaway warming and very large temperature increases.
What is so wrong with the above that they were removed? SEWilco 16:42, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Why William M. Connolley´s technical statements in Wikipedia´s pages are not removed when they are wrong?
( William M. Connolley 20:24, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)) There are two possible things you might be worried about. One is the IPCC defn or radiative forcing. The other is the reliability of the radiation codes used in GCMs. I don't know which: you need to say. They are quite separate however. Hoyt appears to be mixing the two up. But at least he has got rid of that stupid picture.
( SEWilco 08:33, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)) A positive forcing tends to warm while a negative forcing tends to cooling. What's wrong with saying that forcing occurs to what is under the point at which it is measured? I know that forcing happens whether it is measured or not. And overall forcing actually happens for everything within the atmosphere, although some things only happen in certain vertical or geographical regions. But merely saying that positive forcing warms something is ambiguous -- does it warm only the surface, troposphere, clouds, or the Moon? There should be phrasing which indicates what is affected by forcing.
( George2wiki ( talk) 20:50, 15 April 2009 (UTC)) Forcing means something that effects the energy entering the system. Greenhouse gases only influence the response of the system to that forcing influence. The Earth is in energy equilibrium, where the energy radiated by the planet is equal to the energy arriving from the Sun, independent of the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases affect the system response by deferring the re-radiation of incident solar energy and do not trap it forever or add new energy to the system. The time constant of this delay, relative to CO2, is evidenced by the rate of radiation cooling on a clear, dry winter night.
I'd like more information about clouds in this article. I've read some laymen's treatments suggesting that variations in the sun's output affect cloud cover, which in turn affects how much sunlight warms the earth's surface. White stuff reflects not just visible light but infrared too.
Where in Wikipedia is there information on factors affecting cloud formation? I'm intersted in the following:
I dimly recall some papers linking variations in the solar cycle length to terrestial temperature. Did those papers mention a forcing? Dr. C., please comment. -- Uncle Ed 01:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
The image "Radiative Forcings" is too small in the aricle to be useful. The image expand button brings up an image maintenance page lacking a caption, and revealing a background pattern in the image having to do with maintenance.
Wikipedia needs to change its policy of relying on the image mainenance page for the end user's expanded view. The expanded view must be part of the article content. It must retain the text caption from the article and allow for further caption detail, and allow for a third level of image size expansion.
The discussion on the image page is very good. -- Rtdrury 21:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
"the net effect of these feedback mechanisms is to amplify temperature increases CO2, roughly by a factor of two in most models."
Should this read "the net effect...is to amplify THE temperature increase DUE TO CO2, roughly by a factor of two..." Or perhaps something like "The net effect of adding these feedbacks roughly doubles the temperature increase due to atmospheric CO2." Todd Johnston 22:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I recommend changing "radiation energy" to "radiant energy," unless that would change the meaning. D021317c 05:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Rather than editing the following text, I'd like to nit-pick about it:
"In climate science, radiative forcing is (loosely) defined as the difference between the incoming radiation energy and the outgoing radiation energy in a given climate system. A positive forcing (more incoming energy) tends to warm the system, while a negative forcing (more outgoing energy) tends to cool it. Possible sources of radiative forcing are changes in insolation (incident solar radiation), or the effects of variations in the amount of radiatively active gases present."
"Loosely," assuming it belongs there, doesn't require parentheses. The "difference" referred to might be better characterized as that between the amounts of radiant energy entering and leaving the system. "System" ought to be given a link to the thermodynamic usage of the term ("closed system"). "Given" and "climate" are unnecessary. "A" implies that "forcings" are countable things, an unnecessary complication. I'd prefer "Positive forcing tends to warm the system; negative forcing tends to cool it." The "while" is unnecessary, and may suggest, at first glance, that the two kinds of forcing must occur simultaneously, which is probably false.
Unless one is considering changes in radiative forcing (or I misunderstand the term itself), "changes" and "variations" are inappropriate. In other words, when forcing is constant, isn't it wrong to attribute it to changes of any sort?
"Sources," it seems to me, is being wrongly used to mean "causes." Only two are given, and I suspect that both are possible (either separately or together), so "or" should be changed to "and." I wonder whether it is actually wrong to say that one cause may be (1) "variations in the amount of radiatively active gases present," (2) "the amount of radiatively active gases present," (3) "radiatively active gases present," or even (4) radiatively active gases," -- as opposed to the "effects" thereof, and if so, what sort of effects they might be.
Finally, "insolation" and "radiatively active," it seems to me, deserve links of their own.
D021317c 06:19, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Isn't radiative forcing a real phenomenon? Assuming it is, how can one say it "is intended" somehow? Or that it's "a useful way" to do something? Or that it's comparable to "possible tools" which "can be constructed"? We don't speak of gravity or clouds that way. D021317c 06:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Hello i have recently proposed the Wikiproject Earth. This Wikiproject`s scope includes this article. This wikiproject will overview the continents, oceans, atsmophere and global warming Please Voice your opinion by clicking anywhere on this comment except for my name. -- Iwilleditu Talk :) Contributions —Preceding comment was added at 15:36, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
The first sentence uses the term irradiance properly to describe incoming power. The second sentence talks about (net) irradiance as energy. This is a basic (sophmoric) misuse of terms. I just don't understand how such blatant errors get into articles, and manage to stay in them. Where are the critical thinkers/observers? blackcloak ( talk) 06:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
"radiance" is joules/energy per m2 per second, or watts/power per m2. if you switch to joules/energy per m2 the relevant term is "fluence". But, you know, not everyone knows the term "fluence" and I think it reads OK as it is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.209.162.219 ( talk) 11:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think the climatologists who came up with the term "radiative forcing" were just making up a natural-language phrase to refer to sunlight. I think they were talking about something in the math that's an instance of a more general concept of forcing in some branch of mathematics. But I don't know whether the concept is best described as forcing (dynamical systems) or forcing (differential equations) or forcing (physics) or forcing function or something else. Here are a couple references to the term in other mathematical contexts [1] [2]. Currently, forcing function is a disambiguation page with only one link, which is to something unrelated.
Based on those, my inclination is to create forcing function (differential equations), and have the lead in this article begin In climate science, radiative forcing is (loosely) defined as the change in net irradiance at the tropopause. But I don't know whether making part of the main term into a link is acceptable style, and I have too many pages open already about this. For now I'll go ahead and create forcing function (differential equations) . -- Dan Wylie-Sears 2 ( talk) 20:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I added the modtran image. Perhaps the captions should be expanded, for example to identify the Planck curves. Incredio ( talk) 05:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
The page says "where λ is the climate sensitivity, usually with units in K/(W/m2)", surely by the definition given it always has to have these units? Ezshay ( talk) 15:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
So, we have a variety of anons - presumably the same person - adding this [3]. Anybody like it? dT = l dF is the *defn* of radiative forcing [4] so can't be wrong. I don't quite know what the anon is trying to say William M. Connolley ( talk) 21:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
"2. Estimates of climate sensitivity using real global mean temperature variations are consistent with those using output data from the 20c3m IPCC AR4 model runs. There is no inconsistency between the model climate sensitivities and the observed global mean temperature decorrelation timescales, as claimed by Schwartz (2007).
...
4. The large variability of the estimated climate sensitivity derived from these runs, even for multiple runs of the same model, confirms our prediction that estimation of climate sensitivity from a time series of a single variable requires much longer climate records than exist for the real world."
Carbon Dioxide accounts, typically, for less than HALF the radiative forcing of water vapor, yet the chart doesn't even list the latter. It is therefore so grossly inaccurate that it needs to be replaced. -- Kaz ( talk) 12:55, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
The figure of figure file 'Physical_Drivers_of_climate_change.svg', with a caption 'Radiative forcings, IPCC 2021' is incorrect. I meant to upload the correct figure which is Fig. 7.7 of Chpater 7 of ICCP's AR6, Working Group I (go to https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/), however, i abandoned my attempt as this is not my own work, i just took a screenshot from the Report. The most glaring inaccuracy is the contribution of methane. I suppose that this mistake was created in the process of recreating the diagram out of necessity to circumvent copyright issues. It's a pity that because of copyright issues, such errors are generated. Otherwise, I don't get why someone wanted to include in this place a figure of "warming contributions" (for which reason the caption 'Radiative forcings, IPCC 2021' is inaccurate, misleading). This is a page about radiative forcing and perhaps the pertinent figure of the said AR6 chapter is rather Fig. 7.6. However, that is showing what they call the 'Effective radiative forcing' (ERF), which concept i myself don't yet understand. May i mention that i managed to reproduce quite accurately Fig. 7.7 of Chpater 7 of AR6 using the formulae of Table 6.2 of the TAR report ( https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar3/wg1/) as for the five GHGs included in there. So, the present figure file is definitely incorrect wrt. methane. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bodait ( talk • contribs) 13:06, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
Someone ought to add an entry for this use of force at the disambiguation page - sorry, I have no idea of the proper format myself. (Or of the parameters in radiation physics in which the terms force or forcing are appropriately applied.) Milkunderwood ( talk) 00:53, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
99.181.130.240 ( talk) 03:51, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
The answer is Geoffrey.landis, I'm sorry to say [8] William M. Connolley ( talk) 10:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
The table summarizing global radiative forcing does not include water. Given that water is a pretty important greenhouse gas, this would seem to be a glaring omission. Were water to be included, the statement " CO2 dominates the total forcing" would be patently false. The greenhouse effect and the impacts of increasing CO2 are well understood scientific phenomena. Rigging a table to make the effect of CO2 seem larger than it is will only serve the sky dragons. For those not familiar with the term, those are people who state that CO2 has no impact on climate. I realize that the source for this is NOAA and that their site is the source for the table as is, but just because it is a "Reliable Source" doesn't mean it should be included without question. At least a note concerning the fact that the table does not include water. While I'm at it, why is this a climate centric page? Climate is only one of the many fields that look at radiative forcing. Hottel was quantifying the effects of CO2 and H2O in the 1940's, long before anyone cared about climate change. I will not make any changes to this page myself. Too many bad stories about edit wars in anything to do with climate. John G Eggert ( talk) 21:20, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
Water wapor is certainly a very effective greenhouse gas. It is, however, not considered a radiative forcing but a feedback caused by the changes in atmospheric temperature. If for instance the climate is forced by a 1 W/m2 increase in solar irradiance the lower troposphere begins to warm. Therefore it can contain more water wapor which will cause the temperature to increase even more. Torben.schmith ( talk) 20:13, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
References
The article starts out with "In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing, is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space." That's a commendably clear and understandable definition.
Unfortunately it is not remotely like the definition provided by AR5, which (a) references the concept to 1750 (per p.13 of AR5 WG1's Summary for Policymakers, or see the official definition in the Glossary on p.1460) and (b) classifies forcings according to their several causes (Figure SPM.5 on p.14).
Would someone please propose either a plausible interpretation of this sentence for which 1750 would be a relevant date and that furthermore explains how "the" climate forcing thus defined can be apportioned between causes, or (better yet) a reliable source reconciling the two definitions? Otherwise I'm going to flag the offending sentence with a cn tag. Vaughan Pratt ( talk) 05:05, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
* Hear, hear!! This article uses the term that it is supposed to define ("radiative forcing") in different ways at different places. This needs to be fixed. L. Hinkelman, 6/17/2015
The graphic labeled "Radiative Forcing Components" is incorrectly labeled. The graphic shows anomalous changes in radiative forcings--- two completely different things. Eight out of the nine anomalous changes are due to humans. The graphic needs its label changed to reflect the fact that it shows anomalous changes in radiative forcings. It correctly lists all known forcings (which is its function), but the scale is wrong: it shows anomalies, not the entire watts per square meter per forcing. The word "anomalous" needs to be added. -- Desertphile ( talk) 19:46, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Presently, the first sentence of the intro reads:
”In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space”
However, what is described here is not the climate forcing, but the the radiative balance, which is the sum of the climate forcing and the radiative feedback
Some days ago, I changes the sentence to:
” In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing is defined as the change in downward energy flux caused by natural or anthropogenic drivers of climate change relative to a reference state in which climate is assumed to be in radiative balance. ”
This is indeed, what is described in the presentation by Drew Shindell (sheet no. 3) referred to at the end of the sentence
I also removed the illustration, since it illustrates incoming shortwave radiation and not climate forcing.
For unknown reasons, my editing was reverted the following day. I would encourage argumentation for why this was done.
Best regards
Torben.schmith ( talk) 21:42, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Senior scientist, Danish Meteorological Institute
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Can the table in the article be removed? I could improve & update the figure related to this table. I assume people have painstakingly put effort into making this table, but I don't see the added value. Femke Nijsse ( talk) 13:55, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
There is no text in this section, so it is a little difficult to interpret the graphs. However, it appears that the absiccias are incorrectly labeled "wavenumber (1/cm)" instead of wavelength (nm). I can't imagine the far infrared is relevant to this page. Bad-zima ( talk) 21:49, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Could this content about other metrics be condensed? It feels very long winded to me and I don't really see what the long quote is trying to say. It might also be outdated or no longer so important to warrant this much space here?
+++++++
Other metrics can be constructed for the same purpose as radiative forcing. For example Shine et al. [1] say "... recent experiments indicate that for changes in absorbing aerosols and ozone, the predictive ability of radiative forcing is much worse ... we propose an alternative, the 'adjusted troposphere and stratosphere forcing'. We present GCM calculations showing that it is a significantly more reliable predictor of this GCM's surface temperature change than radiative forcing. It is a candidate to supplement radiative forcing as a metric for comparing different mechanisms ...". In this quote, GCM stands for " global circulation model", and the word "predictive" does not refer to the ability of GCMs to forecast climate change. Instead, it refers to the ability of the alternative tool proposed by the authors to help explain the system response.
+++++++
EMsmile ( talk) 20:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
References
EMsmile ( talk) 20:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
I have some doubts about the "Radiation balance" section: It's not clear to me why it is at this position in the article; doesn't it just repeat a lot of content (including 3 graphs!) that are in greenhouse effect? The text has no sources, maybe it's textbook knowledge and doesn't need sources. Also, it says there "main": Earth's energy budget then why not rather use an excerpt from there? Or use an excerpt from greenhouse effect? This way we could reduce the amount of overlapping content. EMsmile ( talk) 20:33, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
It would be good if the structure of the article could be clearer, which could be achieved by using standard headings. So far, the structure (table of content) is this:
Definition - OK for standard heading Radiation balance - Unclear as a heading - update: now removed EMsmile ( talk) 21:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC) Basic estimates - OK for standard heading Recent growth trends - OK for standard heading Direct observation - OK for standard heading Climate sensitivity - Unclear as a heading - update: now removed and integrated further above. EMsmile ( talk) 16:39, 17 January 2024 (UTC) Related metrics - OK for standard heading
EMsmile ( talk) 20:36, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Definition and fundamentals Calculations and measurements Forcing due to changes in atmospheric gases Forcing due to changes in solar irradiance Forcing due to changes in albedo and aerosols Recent growth trends EMsmile ( talk) 16:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
I am a bit confused where the negative radiative forcing content (i.e. aerosols) should be placed and how we should interlink best with the global dimming or the particulates article. So far, aerosols is only mentioned in passing here and there. Should it rather be in the section on "Forcing due to changes in atmospheric gases" or in "Forcing due to changes in albedo and aerosols"? and if so, how and with what detail, without creating overlap and repetition. Maybe use an excerpt? Pinging User:InformationToKnowledge as they are currently working on global dimming. EMsmile ( talk) 16:59, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
I like the generic section of "uses" but I am just wondering if there are other possible uses that we could list, or is climate sensitivity really the only one? EMsmile ( talk) 21:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)