Assessment of pre-industrial to present-day anthropogenic climate forcing in UKESM1

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2020)

Quantifying forcings from anthropogenic perturbations to the Earth System (ES) is important for understanding changes in climate since the pre-industrial period.

In this paper, we quantify and analyse a wide range of present-day (PD) anthropogenic climate forcings with the UK’s Earth System Model (ESM), UKESM1, following the protocols defined by the Radiative Forcing Model Intercomparison Project (RFMIP) and the Aerosol and Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project (AerChemMIP).

In particular, by quantifying effective radiative forcings (ERFs) that include rapid adjustments within a full ESM, it enables the role of various climate-chemistry-aerosol-cloud feedbacks to be quantified.