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Questions of bias in climate models

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 741–742 (2014)Cite this article

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To the Editor —

Shindell1 has contributed to the debate on estimating the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) by noting that the transient response to external forcing depends on the spatial distribution of the forcing; forcings over land lead to more rapid warming than similar forcings over the oceans. He suggests that the omission of spatial forcing details will lead simple models to give biased results for the transient climate response. Shindell chooses to reference only two previous studies2,3 as examples of analyses affected by such a bias, stating for the latter3 that “such biases lead to underestimates of aerosol impacts in [the] calculations”. Shindell's criticism of these particular results is incorrect. Both of these papers use the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC)4, which has always5 accounted for the effect highlighted by Shindell. MAGICC uses differential land–ocean and North–South hemisphere forcings and incorporates different land and ocean feedback factors6,7. Thus, while Shindell has quantified this effect for some Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models, knowledge of the effect per se is not new and it has always been accounted for in MAGICC.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, 20740, Maryland, USA

    Steven J. Smith

  2. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 5005, Australia

    Tom M. L. Wigley

  3. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, 80307, Colorado, USA

    Tom M. L. Wigley

  4. School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, 3010, Victoria, Australia

    Malte Meinshausen

  5. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Telegraphenberg A31, Potsdam, 14412, Germany

    Malte Meinshausen

  6. Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Universitätstrasse 16, Zurich, 8092, Switzerland

    Joeri Rogelj

  7. Energy Program, International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg, 2361, Austria

    Joeri Rogelj

Authors
  1. Steven J. Smith
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  2. Tom M. L. Wigley
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  3. Malte Meinshausen
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  4. Joeri Rogelj
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Correspondence to Steven J. Smith.

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Smith, S., Wigley, T., Meinshausen, M. et al. Questions of bias in climate models. Nature Clim Change 4, 741–742 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2345

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