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2 - Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2022

Kevin E. Trenberth
Affiliation:
National Center for Atmospheric Research
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Summary

Climate change is a general term for long-term changes in climate of either sign. The term “global warming” was popularized by Wally Broecker in 1975 when he published a paper in Science magazine titled “Climatic change: are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?”; although the term had been used as early as 1957 about Roger Revelle’s research. It has most commonly been interpreted to be synonymous with rises in global mean surface temperature (GMST) and associated with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as put forward by Broecker. However, the term is ambiguous because warming can also refer to “heating,” which is more appropriate, and just one consequence of heating is an increase in temperature (another, for example, is “melting”). In fact, this would be a better way to use the term. Another ambiguity is whether it refers to all global temperature rise, for whatever reason, or whether it refers to only anthropogenic temperature increases. In any event, many people did not like it and climate change skeptics, in particular, preferred the term “climate change” to embrace both natural and anthropogenic sources, as well as the possibility that decreases could occur.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

References and Further Reading

Blunden, J. and Arndt, D. S., eds., 2020: State of the climate in 2019. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 101, SiS429. Doi: 10.1175/2020BAMSStateoftheClimate.1.Google Scholar
Broecker, W., 1975: Climatic change: are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming? Science, 189, 460463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedlingstein, P, Jones, M. W., O’Sullivan, M., et al., 2019: Global carbon budget 2019, Earth System Science Data, 11, 17831838. doi: 10.5194/essd-11-1783-2019.Google Scholar
Hausfather, Z, and Betts, R., 2020: Importance of carbon-cycle feedback uncertainties. www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-carbon-cycle-feedbacks-could-make-global-warming-worseGoogle Scholar
Trenberth, K. E., 1997: The use and abuse of climate models in climate change research. Nature, 386, 131133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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