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Contribution of Projected Temperature Increases due to the Permafrost Carbon Feedback
Kevin
M
Schaefer, National Snow and Ice Data Center, kevin.schaefer@nsidc.org
(Presenter)
Christopher
A
Williams, Clark University, cwilliams@clarku.edu
Christopher
R
Schwalm, Northern Arizona University, christopher.schwalm@nau.edu
Zhuxiao
Li, 4National Center for Atmospheric Research, zhu66@ucar.edu
Current techniques to estimate uncertainty in projections of future climate emphasize multi-model or single model ensembles, which require huge computational resources and are impractical except for large integrated efforts like the IPCC Assessment Reports. We developed techniques to estimate uncertainty for a single climate projection by comparison with observations and Gaussian error propagation. We demonstrate the technique for a climate projection from 1850 to 2300 for the A1B scenario using Community Earth System Model (CESM). We estimated overall model bias and uncertainty by comparing simulated and observed global climate sensitivity (change in temperature per change in atmospheric CO2 concentration). We estimated the relative contribution of uncertainty in fossil fuel emissions and the Permafrost Carbon Feedback to total uncertainty in simulated global surface air temperature. We verified our results by comparing to a more traditional ensemble of CESM perturbation simulations. Our results indicate that uncertainty in the reported fossil fuel emissions dominate total uncertainty in simulated surface air temperature. The contribution of the permafrost Carbon Feedback to total temperature is proportional to the fraction of total CO2 emissions from thawing permafrost.
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Poster Session 2-A
(Wed 11:00 AM)
Associated Project(s):
Poster Location ID: 73
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