Climate inertia

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Societal elements of inertia work to prevent abrupt shifts within pathways of greenhouse gas emissions, while physical inertia of the Earth system acts to delay the surface temperature response.

Climate inertia or climate change inertia is the phenomenon by which a planet's

feedback within complex systems, and includes the inertia exhibited by physical movements of matter and exchanges of energy. The term is a colloquialism used to encompass and loosely describe a set of interactions that extend the timescales around climate sensitivity
. Inertia has been associated with the drivers of, and the responses to, climate change.

Increasing

biogeochemical feedbacks have contributed further resiliency. Energy stored in the ocean following the inertial responses principally determines near-term irreversible change known as climate commitment.[6]

Earth's inertial responses are important because they provide the planet's diversity of life and its human civilization further time to adapt to an acceptable degree of planetary change. However, unadaptable change like that accompanying some tipping points may only be avoidable with early understanding and mitigation of the risk of such dangerous outcomes.[7][8] This is because inertia also delays much surface warming unless and until action is taken to rapidly reduce emissions.[9][10] An aim of Integrated assessment modelling, summarized for example as Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP), is to explore Earth system risks that accompany large inertia and uncertainty in the trajectory of human drivers of change.[11]

Inertial timescales

Response times to climate forcing[12]
Earth System
Component		 Time
Constant
(years)		 Response
Modes
Atmosphere
Water Vapor
and Clouds		 10−2-10 EC, WC
Trace Gases 10−1-108 CC
Hydrosphere
Ocean Mixed
Layer		 10−1-10 EC, WC,
CC
Deep Ocean 10-103 EC, CC
Lithosphere
Land Surface
and Soils		 10−1-102 EC, WC,
CC
Subterranean
Sediments		 104-109 CC
Cryosphere
Glaciers 10−1-10 EC, WC
Sea Ice 10−1-10 EC, WC
Ice Sheets 103-106 EC, WC
Biosphere
Upper Marine 10−1-102 CC
Terrestrial 10−1-102 WC, CC
EC=Energy Cycle
WC=Water Cycle  CC=Carbon Cycle

The

paleoclimate record shows that Earth's climate system has evolved along various pathways and with multiple timescales. Its relatively stable states which can persist for many millennia have been interrupted by short to long transitional periods of relative instability.[13]: 19–72  Studies of climate sensitivity and inertia are concerned with quantifying the most basic manner in which a sustained forcing perturbation will cause the system to deviate within or initially away from its relatively stable state of the present Holocene epoch.[14][15]

"

heat transport and storage in the ocean, cryosphere, land and atmosphere are elements within a lumped thermal analysis.[16][17]: 627  Response times to radiative forcing
via the atmosphere typically increase with depth below the surface.

Inertial time constants indicate a base rate for forced changes, but lengthy values provide no guarantee of long-term system evolution along a smooth pathway. Numerous higher-order tipping elements having various trigger thresholds and transition timescales have been identified within Earth's present state.[18][19] Such events might precipitate a nonlinear rearrangement of internal energy flows along with more rapid shifts in climate and/or other systems at regional to global scale.[13]: 10–15, 73–76 

Climate response time

The response of global surface temperature (GST) to a step-like doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration, and its resultant forcing, is defined as the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS). The ECS response extends over short and long timescales, however the main time constant associated with ECS has been identified by Jule Charney, James Hansen and others as a useful metric to help guide policymaking.[10][20] RCPs, SSPs, and other similar scenarios have also been used by researchers to simulate the rate of forced climate changes. By definition, ECS presumes that ongoing emissions will offset the ocean and land carbon sinks following the step-wise perturbation in atmospheric CO2.[10][21]

ECS response time is proportional to ECS and is principally regulated by the thermal inertia of the uppermost

deep ocean.[4][10]

Components

Thermal inertia

See also: Volumetric heat capacity § Thermal inertia
The observed accumulation of energy in the oceanic, land, ice, and atmospheric components of Earth's climate system since 1960.[22] The rate of rise has been partially slowed by the system's thermal inertia.

Thermal inertia is a term which refers to the observed delays in a body's temperature response during heat transfers. A body with large thermal inertia can store a big amount of energy because of its

Planck response
.

Ocean inertia

The global ocean is Earth's largest

global climate models, and has been confirmed via measurements of ocean heat content.[7][23] The observed transient climate sensitivity is proportional to the thermal inertia time scale of the shallower ocean.[24]

Ice sheet inertia

Even after

ice sheets will persist and further increase sea-level rise for centuries. The slower transportation of heat into the extreme deep ocean, subsurface land sediments, and thick ice sheets will continue until the new Earth system equilibrium has been reached.[25]

Permafrost also takes longer to respond to a warming planet because of thermal inertia, due to ice rich materials and permafrost thickness.[26]

Inertia from carbon cycle feedbacks

See also:
Climate change feedback § Carbon cycle
The impulse response following a 100 GtC injection of CO2 into Earth's atmosphere.[27] The relative inertial effect of positive vs. negative feedback during early years is indicated by the pulse fraction which ultimately remains.

Earth's carbon cycle feedback includes a destabilizing positive feedback (identified as the climate-carbon feedback) which prolongs warming for centuries, and a stabilizing negative feedback (identified as the concentration-carbon feedback) which limits the ultimate warming response to fossil carbon emissions. The near-term effect following emissions is asymmetric with latter mechanism being about four times larger,[5][28] and results in a significant net slowing contribution to the inertia of the climate system during the first few decades following emissions.[9]

Ecological inertia

Main articles: Ecological stability and Ecological resilience

Depending on the ecosystem, effects of climate change could show quickly, while others take more time to respond. For instance, coral bleaching can occur in a single warm season, while trees may be able to persist for decades under a changing climate, but be unable to regenerate. Changes in the frequency of extreme weather events could disrupt ecosystems as a consequence, depending on individual response times of species.[25]

Policy implications of inertia

The IPCC concluded that the inertia and uncertainty of the climate system, ecosystems, and socioeconomic systems implies that margins for safety should be considered. Thus, setting strategies, targets, and time tables for avoiding dangerous interference through climate change. Further the IPCC concluded in their 2001 report that the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentration, temperature, or sea level is affected by:[25]

  • The inertia of the climate system, which will cause climate change to continue for a period after mitigation actions are implemented.[8][29]
  • Uncertainty regarding the location of possible thresholds of irreversible change and the behavior of the system in their vicinity.
  • The time lags between adoption of mitigation goals and their achievement.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Explainer: How 'Shared Socioeconomic Pathways' explore future climate change". Carbon Brief. 19 April 2018. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
  2. ISSN 0959-3780
    .
  3. ^ a b Michon Scott (2006-04-24). "Earth's Big Heat Bucket". NASA Earth Observatory.
  4. ^
    S2CID 54695479
    .
  5. ^
    doi:10.1175/2009JCLI2949.1
    .
  6. ISBN 9781009157896
    .
  7. ^
    PMID 24312568
    .
  8. ^
    PMID 24101485
    .
  9. ^
    S2CID 44352274
    .
  10. ^
    doi:10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
    .
  11. ISSN 1750-6816
    .
  12. ^
    ISBN 978-2271057327
    .
  13. ^
    ISBN 978-0-309-13304-3
    .
  14. S2CID 29665980
    .
  15. PMID 30082409
    .
  16. ^
    S2CID 22938919
    .
  17. ISBN 978-90-277-2789-3
    .
  18. PMID 18258748
    .
  19. S2CID 252161375
    .
  20. doi:10.17226/12181
    .
  21. PMID 33015673
    .
  22. hdl:20.500.11850/443809
    .
  23. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0895.1
    .
  24. arXiv:1307.6821 [physics.ao-ph
    ].
  25. ^ a b c "Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report". IPCC. 2001. Retrieved 11 May 2015.
  26. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.383.5875
    .
  27. hdl:20.500.11850/58316
    .
  28. hdl:2268/12933
    .
  29. PMID 32636367
    .
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Climate_inertia&oldid=1217587392"