Reassessing the Climate Change Narrative
Name
13143_2024_Article_353.pdf
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1.52 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Lindzen, Richard S.
Christy, John R.
Date Issued
March 15, 2024
Journal
Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Lindzen, R.S., Christy, J.R. Reassessing the Climate Change Narrative. Asia-Pac J Atmos Sci (2024).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We note that the atmosphere has distinct tropical and extratropical regimes. The tropical regime is significantly dependent on the greenhouse effect and is characterized by temperatures that are largely horizontally homogenized. The extratropical regime is dominated by large scale unstable convective eddies that transport heat between the tropics and the poles (leaving the poles warmer than they otherwise would be) and serve to determine the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles. Changes in tropical temperature and in the tropics-to-pole temperature difference both contribute to changes in global mean temperature. It turns out that changes in global mean temperature associated with major climate change (i.e., the last glacial maximum and the warm period of the Eocene about 50 million years ago) were associated primarily with changes in the tropics-to-pole temperature differences. By contrast, changes in global mean temperature over the past 150 years or so are almost entirely associated with changes in tropical temperature. Thus, there is no intrinsic amplification associated with a change in the tropics-to-pole temperature difference. However, model simulations of climate behave differently from both observations and from each other. In particular, they all show more significant contributions for the tropics-to-pole temperature difference – sometimes much more significant. They also show excessive tropical warming.
Subjects
Atmospheric Science
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-024-00353-9
