• DOI:10.1126/science.1174760
• Corpus ID: 30881469

Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions

@article{Shindell2009ImprovedAO,
  title={Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions},
  author={Drew T. Shindell and Gregory Faluvegi and Dorothy M. Koch and Gavin A. Schmidt and Nadine Unger and Susanne E. Bauer},
  journal={Science},
  year={2009},
  volume={326},
  pages={716 - 718}
}

• D. Shindell, G. Faluvegi, +3 authors S. Bauer
• Published 30 October 2009
• Environmental Science
• Science

All Together Now Deciding how to change emissions of polluting gases that affect climate through their radiative forcing properties requires that the quantitative impact of these emissions be understood. Most past calculations of this type have considered only the radiative forcing of the specific emission and its atmospheric lifetime. Shindell et al. (p. 716; see the Perspectives by Arneth et al. and by Parrish and Zhu) use sophisticated atmospheric chemical and climate modeling to determine how gas-aerosol interactions affect the radiative properties of the atmosphere, finding significant departures from the standard method for emissions of methane, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides. These findings should help to optimize strategies for mitigating global warming by reducing anthropogenic emissions. Chemical interactions between atmospheric gases and aerosols modify the global warming impacts of emissions. Evaluating multicomponent climate change mitigation strategies requires knowledge of the diverse direct and indirect effects of emissions. Methane, ozone, and aerosols are linked through atmospheric chemistry so that emissions of a single pollutant can affect several species. We calculated atmospheric composition changes, historical radiative forcing, and forcing per unit of emission due to aerosol and tropospheric ozone precursor emissions in a coupled composition-climate model. We found that gas-aerosol interactions substantially alter the relative importance of the various emissions. In particular, methane emissions have a larger impact than that used in current carbon-trading schemes or in the Kyoto Protocol. Thus, assessments of multigas mitigation policies, as well as any separate efforts to mitigate warming from short-lived pollutants, should include gas-aerosol interactions.