Izvestiya of Saratov University.
ISSN 1819-7663 (Print)
ISSN 2542-1921 (Online)


impulse response

Estimation of Characteristics of the Earth’s Climate System from its Response to Changes in Solar Constant

Restoration of the impulse response of the Earth's climate system (ECS) showed that the rate of its reaction can be characterized by an equivalent time constant of 1.04±0.17 months. Sensitivity of ECS to changes in radiative forcing is equal to 0.41±0.05 K W-1m2, which gives the positive feedback factor 1.37±0.17.

Estimation of Response Time and Sensitivity of the Earth’s Climate System to Radiative Forcing

The Earth’s climate system (ECS) is considered as a linear system whose input is a change in the solar constant, and the output is an anomaly of the globally averaged surface temperature. As a result of the restoration, the impulse response of the system was obtained at time intervals up to 100 months. It has been shown that the response time of ECS can be characterized by a time constant of 1.305 ± 0.026 months. The sensitivity of ECS to radiative forcing is 0.320±0.074 K W-1m2, and the positive feedback coefficient is 1.07±0.25.

Estimation of Impulse Response of Earth’s Climate System at Century Time Interval

The Earth’s climate system (ECS) is considered as a linear system whose input is the change in the solar constant, and whose output is the global mean near-surface temperature anomaly. As a result of the restoration of the impulse response at century time interval using reconstructed data on the solar constant and global temperature it was shown that its time constant is 32 ± 14 years. The sensitivity of the ECS to radiative forcing is 1.31 ± 0.63 K·W-1·m2, and the positive feedback coefficient is 4.4 ± 2.1.