A report accepted by Working Group I of the IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change but not approved in detail
“Acceptance” o IPCC Reports at a Session o the Working Group or Panel signiies that the material has not beensubject to line-by-line discussion and agreement, but nevertheless presents a comprehensive, objectiveand balanced view o the subject matter.
Technical Summary
Coordinating Lead Authors:
Susan Solomon (USA), Dahe Qin (China), Martin Manning (USA, New Zealand)
Lead Authors:
Richard B. Alley (USA), Terje Berntsen (Norway), Nathaniel L. Bindo (Australia), Zhenlin Chen (China), Amnat Chidthaisong (Thailand), Jonathan M. Gregory (UK), Gabriele C. Hegerl (USA, Germany),Martin Heimann (Germany, Switzerland), Bruce Hewitson (South Arica), Brian J. Hoskins (UK), Fortunat Joos (Switzerland),Jean Jouzel (France), Vladimir Kattsov (Russia), Ulrike Lohmann (Switzerland), Taroh Matsuno (Japan),Mario Molina (USA, Mexico), Neville Nicholls (Australia), Jonathan Overpeck (USA), Graciela Raga (Mexico, Argentina), Venkatachalam Ramaswamy (USA), Jiawen Ren (China), Matilde Rusticucci (Argentina), Richard Somerville (USA),Thomas F. Stocker (Switzerland), Ronald J. Stouer (USA), Penny Whetton (Australia), Richard A. Wood (UK),David Wratt (New Zealand)
Contributing Authors:
J. Arblaster (USA, Australia), G. Brasseur (USA, Germany), J.H. Christensen (Denmark), K.L. Denman (Canada),D.W. Fahey (USA), P. Forster (UK), J. Haywood (UK), E. Jansen (Norway), P.D. Jones (UK), R. Knutti (Switzerland),H. Le Treut (France), P. Lemke (Germany), G. Meehl (USA), D. Randall (USA), D.A. Stone (UK, Canada), K.E. Trenberth (USA),J. Willebrand (Germany), F. Zwiers (Canada)
Review Editors:
Kansri Boonpragob (Thailand), Filippo Giorgi (Italy), Bubu Pateh Jallow (The Gambia)
This Technical Summary should be cited as:
Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, R.B. Alley, T. Berntsen, N.L. Bindo, Z. Chen, A. Chidthaisong, J.M. Gregory, G.C. Hegerl,M. Heimann, B. Hewitson, B.J. Hoskins, F. Joos, J. Jouzel, V. Kattsov, U. Lohmann, T. Matsuno, M. Molina, N. Nicholls, J.Overpeck, G. Raga, V. Ramaswamy, J. Ren, M. Rusticucci, R. Somerville, T.F. Stocker, P. Whetton, R.A. Wood and D. Wratt,2007: Technical Summary. In:
Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution o Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report o the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
[Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis,K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY,USA.
20
Technical Summary
Table of Contents
TS.1Introduction
...................................................21
TS.2ChangesinHumanandNaturalDriversofClimate
.......................................21
Box TS.1: Treatment o Uncertainties inthe Working Group I Assessment
...............22TS.2.1 Greenhouse Gases ...................................23TS.2.2 Aerosols ....................................................29TS.2.3 Aviation Contrails and Cirrus, LandUse and Other Eects ..............................30TS.2.4 Radiative Forcing Due to Solar Activity and Volcanic Eruptions ................30TS.2.5 Net Global Radiative Forcing,Global Warming Potentials andPatterns o Forcing ...................................31TS 2.6 Surace Forcing and theHydrologic Cycle ......................................35
TS.3ObservationsofChangesinClimate
.......................................................35TS.3.1 Atmospheric Changes:Instrumental Record .................................35
Box TS.2: Patterns (Modes) o Climate Variability
................................................39TS.3.2 Changes in the Cryosphere:Instrumental Record .................................43
Box TS.3: Ice Sheet Dynamics and Stability
...............44TS.3.3 Changes in the Ocean:Instrumental Record .................................47
Box TS.4: Sea Level
................................................51TS.3.4 Consistency Among Observations ...........51
Box TS.5: Extreme Weather Events
...........................53TS.3.5 A Palaeoclimatic Perspective ...................54
Box TS.6: Orbital Forcing
.........................................56
TS.4UnderstandingandAttributingClimateChange
............................................58TS.4.1 Advances in Attribution o Changesin Global-Scale Temperature in theInstrumental Period: Atmosphere,Ocean and Ice ..........................................58
Box TS.7: Evaluation o Atmosphere-OceanGeneral Circulation Models
.......................59TS.4.2 Attribution o Spatial and TemporalChanges in Temperature ...........................62TS.4.3 Attribution o Changes in Circulation,Precipitation and OtherClimate Variables ......................................64TS.4.4 Palaeoclimate Studies o Attribution .................................................64TS.4.5 Climate Response to RadiativeForcing ......................................................64
TS.5ProjectionsofFutureChangesinClimate
.......................................................66
Box TS.8: Hierarchy o Global Climate Models
...........67TS.5.1 Understanding Near-TermClimate Change ........................................68
Box TS.9: Committed Climate Change
......................68TS.5.2 Large-Scale Projections or the21st Century .............................................69TS.5.3 Regional-Scale Projections ......................74
Box TS.10:
Regional Downscaling
............................74TS.5.4 Coupling Between Climate Changeand Changes in BiogeochemicalCycles .......................................................77TS.5.5 Implications o Climate Processesand their Time Scales or Long-TermProjections ................................................79
TS.6RobustFindingsandKeyUncertainties
..................................................81TS.6.1 Changes in Human and NaturalDrivers o Climate .....................................81TS.6.2 Observations o Changes in Climate ........82TS.6.3 Understanding and AttributingClimate Change ........................................86TS.6.4 Projections o Future Changes inClimate .....................................................87
Technical Summary
21
TS.1 Introduction
In the six years since the IPCC’s Third Assessment
Report (TAR), signicant progress has been made in
understanding past and recent climate change and in projecting future changes. These advances have arisenfrom large amounts of new data, more sophisticatedanalyses of data, improvements in the understandingand simulation of physical processes in climate modelsand more extensive exploration of uncertainty ranges
in model results. The increased condence in climatescience provided by these developments is evident inthis Working Group I contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth
Assessment Report.While this report provides new and important policy-
relevant information on the scientic understanding of
climate change, the complexity of the climate system
and the multiple interactions that determine its behaviour impose limitations on our ability to understand fully thefuture course of Earth’s global climate. There is still an
incomplete physical understanding of many componentsof the climate system and their role in climate change.
Key uncertainties include aspects of the roles played by
clouds, the cryosphere, the oceans, land use and couplings
between climate and biogeochemical cycles. The areas of
science covered in this report continue to undergo rapid
progress and it should be recognised that the presentassessment reects scientic understanding based on the peer-reviewed literature available in mid-2006.The key ndings of the IPCC Working Group I
assessment are presented in the Summary for Policymakers. This Technical Summary provides a more
detailed overview of the scientic basis for those ndings
and provides a road map to the chapters of the underlying
report. It focuses on key ndings, highlighting what
is new since the TAR. The structure of the TechnicalSummary is as follows:
•
Section 2: an overview of current scientic
understanding of the natural and anthropogenic driversof changes in climate;
•
Section 3: an overview of observed changes in the
climate system (including the atmosphere, oceansand cryosphere) and their relationships to physical processes;
•
Section 4: an overview of explanations of observedclimate changes based on climate models and physical
understanding, the extent to which climate change can
be attributed to specic causes and a new evaluation of
climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas increases;
•
Section 5: an overview of projections for both near-
and far-term climate changes including the time scales
of responses to changes in forcing, and probabilisticinformation about future climate change; and
•
Section 6: a summary of the most robust ndings
and the key uncertainties in current understanding of physical climate change science.Each paragraph in the Technical Summary reporting
substantive results is followed by a reference in curly brackets to the corresponding chapter section(s) of the
underlying report where the detailed assessment of the
scientic literature and additional information can be
found.
TS.2 Changes in Human andNatural Drivers o Climate
The Earth’s global mean climate is determined byincoming energy from the Sun and by the properties of theEarth and its atmosphere, namely the reection, absorption
and emission of energy within the atmosphere and at thesurface. Although changes in received solar energy (e.g.,
caused by variations in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun)inevitably affect the Earth’s energy budget, the properties
of the atmosphere and surface are also important and these
may be affected by climate feedbacks. The importance of climate feedbacks is evident in the nature of past climatechanges as recorded in ice cores up to 650,000 years old.
Changes have occurred in several aspects of the
atmosphere and surface that alter the global energy budget of the Earth and can therefore cause the climate
to change. Among these are increases in greenhousegas concentrations that act primarily to increase the
atmospheric absorption of outgoing radiation, andincreases in aerosols (microscopic airborne particles or droplets) that act to reect and absorb incoming solar
radiation and change cloud radiative properties. Suchchanges cause a radiative forcing of the climate system.
1
Forcing agents can differ considerably from one another in
terms of the magnitudes of forcing, as well as spatial andtemporal features. Positive and negative radiative forcings
contribute to increases and decreases, respectively, in
1
‘Radiative orcing’ is a measure o the infuence a actor has in altering the balance o incoming and outgoing energy in the Earth-atmosphere system and is anindex o the importance o the actor as a potential climate change mechanism. Positive orcing tends to warm the surace while negative orcing tends to cool it.In this report, radiative orcing values are or changes relative to a pre-industrial background at 1750, are expressed in Watts per square metre (W m
–2
) and, unlessotherwise noted, reer to a global and annual average value. See Glossary or urther details.
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