Climate change feedbacks
Feedback related to climate change / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Climate change feedbacks are processes in the climate system which amplify or diminish the effect of forces that initially cause the warming. Positive feedbacks enhance global warming while negative feedbacks weaken it.[3]: 2233 Feedbacks are important in the understanding of climate change because they play an important part in determining the sensitivity of the climate to warming forces. Climate forcings and feedbacks together determine how much and how fast the climate changes.[4]
The main positive feedback is that warming increases the amount of atmospheric water vapor, which is a powerful greenhouse gas.[5] Another positive feedback is the loss of reflective snow and ice cover. Positive carbon cycle feedbacks occur when organic matter burns or decays, releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere. Loss of organic matter can happen through rainforest drying, forest fires, and desertification. Methane can also be released into the atmosphere by thawing permafrost.
The main cooling effect is called the Planck response, which comes from the Stefan–Boltzmann law. It states that the total energy radiated per unit surface area per unit time is directly proportional to the fourth power of the black body's temperature. The carbon cycle acts a negative feedback as it absorbs more than half of CO2 emissions every year. Atmospheric CO2 gets absorbed into plants over the short term and more slowly into rocks over the long term. It also gets dissolved in the ocean where it leads to ocean acidification. Over the long term higher temperatures and carbon sink saturation are reducing the percentage of CO2 emissions the Earth absorbs.
Calculating climate sensitivity requires accounting for the Planck response, radiative feedbacks, and carbon cycle feedbacks. Overall, climate sensitivity is expected to increase in the near future,[2]: 95 although there is no threat of a runaway greenhouse effect.[6] Time frames and emission rates impact estimates. Feedbacks associated with ice sheets can take centuries, whereas the other feedbacks have a substantial role within decades. Feedbacks can also result in localized differences, such as increased warming in locations with reduced snow and ice. Feedback strengths and relationships are estimated through global climate models, with their estimates calibrated against observational data whenever possible.[7]: 967