Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2019/s25/3/a/solution

The transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions is , where is cumulative emitted carbon dioxide in a stated mass unit. Here the unit is tonnes of , rather than tonnes of carbon. Increasing concentration weakens the incremental radiative forcing per added atmospheric tonne because forcing is approximately logarithmic. Over a substantial range this is partly offset by a weakening of carbon sinks and by the changing ratio between transient warming and forcing as ocean heat uptake evolves. These approximate compensations make warming nearly proportional to cumulative emissions; no exact cancellation follows from the logarithmic forcing law alone. The approximation is range- and pathway-dependent, and is not a theorem valid for arbitrary emissions histories.

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