[1] We use a global climate model to compare the effectiveness of many climate forcing agents for producing climate change. We find a substantial range in the ''efficacy'' of different forcings, where the efficacy is the global temperature response per unit forcing relative to the response to CO 2 forcing. Anthropogenic CH 4 has efficacy $110%, which increases to $145% when its indirect effects on stratospheric H 2 O and tropospheric O 3 are included, yielding an effective climate forcing of $0.8 W/m 2 for the period 1750-2000 and making CH 4 the largest anthropogenic climate forcing other than CO 2 . Black carbon (BC) aerosols from biomass burning have a calculated efficacy $58%, while fossil fuel BC has an efficacy $78%. Accounting for forcing efficacies and for indirect effects via snow albedo and cloud changes, we find that fossil fuel soot, defined as BC + OC (organic carbon), has a net positive forcing while biomass burning BC + OC has a negative forcing. We show that replacement of the traditional instantaneous and adjusted forcings, Fi and Fa, with an easily computed alternative, Fs, yields a better predictor of climate change, i.e., its efficacies are closer to unity. Fs is inferred from flux and temperature changes in a fixed-ocean model run. There is remarkable congruence in the spatial distribution of climate change, normalized to the same forcing Fs, for most climate forcing agents, suggesting that the global forcing has more relevance to regional climate change than may have been anticipated. Increasing greenhouse gases intensify the Hadley circulation in our model, increasing rainfall in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), Eastern United States, and East Asia, while intensifying dry conditions in the subtropics including the Southwest United States, the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and an expanding Sahel. These features survive in model simulations that use all estimated forcings for the period 1880-2000. Responses to localized forcings, such as land use change and heavy regional concentrations of BC aerosols, include more specific regional characteristics. We suggest that anthropogenic tropospheric O 3 and the BC snow albedo effect contribute substantially to rapid warming and sea ice loss in the Arctic. As a complement to a priori forcings, such as Fi, Fa, and Fs, we tabulate the a posteriori effective forcing, Fe, which is the product of the forcing and its efficacy. Fe requires calculation of the climate response and introduces greater model dependence, but once it is calculated for a given amount of a forcing agent it provides a good prediction of the response to other forcing amounts.

We study climate sensitivity and feedback processes in three independent ways: (1) by using a three dimensional (3-D) global climate model for experiments in which solar irradiance S o is increased 2 percent or CO 2 is doubled, (2) by using the CLIMAP climate boundary conditions to analyze the contributions of different physical processes to the cooling of the last ice age (18K years ago), and (3) by using estimated changes in global temperature and the abundance of atmospheric greenhouse gases to deduce an empirical climate sensitivity for the period 1850-1980. Our 3-D global climate model yields a warming of ~4°C for either a 2 percent increase of S o or doubled CO 2. This indicates a net feedback factor of f = 3-4, because either of these forcings would cause the earth's surface temperature to warm 1.2-1.3°C to restore radiative balance with space, if other factors remained unchanged. Principal positive feedback processes in the model are changes in atmospheric water vapor, clouds and snow/ice cover. Feedback factors calculated for these processes, with atmospheric dynamical feedbacks implicitly incorporated, are respectively f water vapor ~ 1.6, f clouds ~ 1.3 and f snow/ice ~ 1.1, with the latter mainly caused by sea ice changes. A number of potential feedbacks, such as land ice cover, vegetation cover and ocean heat transport were held fixed in these experiments. We calculate land ice, sea ice and vegetation feedbacks for the 18K climate to be f land ice ~ 1.2-1.3, f sea ice ~ 1.2, and f vegetation ~ 1.05-1.1 from their effect on the radiation budget at the top of the atmosphere. This sea ice feedback at 18K is consistent with the smaller f snow/ice ~ 1.1 in the S o and CO 2 experiments, which applied to a warmer earth with less sea ice. We also obtain an empirical estimate of f = 2-4 for the fast feedback processes (water vapor, clouds, sea ice) operating on 10-100 year time scales by comparing the cooling due to slow or specified changes (land ice, CO 2 , vegetation) to the total cooling at 18K. The temperature increase believed to have occurred in the past 130 years (approximately 0.5°C) is also found to imply a climate sensitivity of 2.5-5°C for doubled CO 2 (f = 2-4), if (1) the temperature increase is due to the added greenhouse gases, (2) the 1850 CO 2 abundance was 270 ± 10 ppm, and (3) the heat perturbation is mixed like a passive tracer in the ocean with vertical mixing coefficient k ~ 1 cm 2 s −1. These analyses indicate that f is substantially greater than unity on all time scales. Our best estimate for the current climate due to processes operating on the 10-100 year time scale is f = 2-4, corresponding to a climate sensitivity of 2.5-5°C for doubled CO 2. The physical process contributing the greatest uncertainty to f on this time scale appears to be the cloud feedback.

Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols, among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 +/- 0.15 watts per square meter more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years. Implications include (i) the expectation of additional global warming of about 0.6 degrees C without further change of atmospheric composition; (ii) the confirmation of the climate system's lag in responding to forcings, implying the need for anticipatory actions to avoid any specified level of climate change; and (iii) the likelihood of acceleration of ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise.