There are different climate drivers that impact the temperature. Some of these drivers are greenhouse gases, ozone concentrations, natural and manmade aerosols, and land use changes. Based on past 150 years’ observations, NASA has calculated the impact of such different climate drivers on the temperature. The researchers of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) based in New York, used data of years 1850 to 2005 with computer simulations to calculate the impact.
Results showed that all climate drivers have different impacts. Different drivers have different sets of conditions that impact the temperature on the Earth. Carbon dioxide is spread across the globe uniformly and gives a consistent temperature response. As per the researchers the sensitivity of Earth’s environment to carbon dioxide is underestimated.
There are two methods known as Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) and Transient Climate Response (TCR) to quantify the climatic change. When there is an increase in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide i.e. it doubles, the surface temperature changes. The global mean of change in these surface temperatures on different timescales projects the value of Transient Climate Response (TCR) and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS).
NASA has made many attempts to calculate the values of TCR and ECS and to measure important climate drivers using past 150 years data earlier. NASA has also simplified many assumptions during the calculation of temperature impact of various climate drivers apart from carbon dioxide like aerosols. Aerosols are tiny particles emitted during a volcanic eruption. It reflects away the solar radiations to cool the Earth at least temporarily. Similarly bare lands are created due to deforestation that increases reflected sunlight. Such simplistic assumptions results in incorrect values of TCR and ECS, they are lower than the actual. This approach doesn’t consider impacts of individual region on each of the variables. NASA believes that studying such factors will help us make correct guesses regarding climate change in today’s world.