comment on ‘‘heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of.pdfVIP

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 113, D15102, doi:10.1029/2007JD009373, 2008 Click Here for Full Article Comment on ‘‘Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system’’ by S. E. Schwartz Grant Foster,1 James D. Annan,2 Gavin A. Schmidt,3 and Michael E. Mann4 Received 10 September 2007; revised 30 April 2008; accepted 6 May 2008; published 2 August 2008. Citation: Foster, G., J. D. Annan, G. A. Schmidt, and M. E. Mann (2008), Comment on ‘‘Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system’’ by S. E. Schwartz, J. Geophys. Res. , 113, D15102, doi:10.1029/2007JD009373. 1. Introduction (section 4) models. First, in section 2, we explore the plausibility of the AR(1) approximation. [1] In a recent paper, Schwartz [2007] (hereinafter referred to as S07) estimated climate sensitivity using globally averaged observed time series. He estimated the 2. Autocorrelation of an AR(1) Process planet’s effective heat capacity and ‘‘pertinent time constant’’ [4] Even if the stochastic part of the temperature time from ocean heat content and observed global temperature series can be approximated by an autoregressive process, it records, assuming that the latter can be modeled as a first- may still exhibit numerous time scales. The climate system order Markov (AR(1)) process after removing the trend due is likely to show such behavior, as it has multiple compo- to climate forcing by subtracting a linear trend. nents with physically distinct characteristics: the atmo- [2] As S07 correctly states, the autocorrelation of an sphere, land, upper ocean, deep ocean, and