Sea ice
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| Radiative forcing and albedo feedback from the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere between 1979 and 2008 | 
Figure 1 | Seasonal cycles of Northern Hemisphere CrRF and changes in forcing from 1979 to 2008. Contributions to TOA forcing for land-based snowpack (green, squares), sea ice (blue, diamonds) and combined snow+sea-ice (black, circles). a, The mean influence of the cryosphere during 1979–2008. b, 30-year changes calculated from linear trends. The whiskers depict full ranges of snow + sea-ice cryosphere forcing from the 12 all-sky albedo contrast and radiative kernel scenarios listed in Tables 1 and 2. The crosses in b indicate months of statistically significant change at P = 0.01. | The extent of snow cover and sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere has declined since 1979, coincident with hemispheric warming and indicative of a positive feedback of surface reflectivity on climate. This albedo feedback of snow on land has been quantified from observations at seasonal timescales3–6, and century-scale feedback has been assessed using climate models7–10. However, the total impact of the cryosphere on radiative forcing and albedo feedback has yet to be determined from measurements. Here we assess the influence of the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere on Earth's radiation budget at the top of the atmosphere—termed cryosphere radiative forcing—by synthesizing a variety of remote sensing and field measurements. We estimate mean Northern Hemisphere forcing at -4.6 to -2.2 W m-2 , with a peak in May of -9.0 ± 2.7 W m-2 . We find that cyrospheric cooling declined by 0.45 W m-2 from 1979 to 2008, with nearly equal contributions from changes i | | | Source: Nature Geoscience | | URL: http://data.engin.umich.edu/faculty/flanner/content/ppr/FlS11.pdf |
| IPCC 1.5° C Report | | Table 2.2 | The assessed remaining carbon budget and its uncertainties. | 
Shaded blue horizontal bands illustrate the uncertainty in historical temperature increase from the 1850–1900 base period until the 2006–2015 period as estimated from global near-surface air temperatures, which impacts the additional arming until a specific temperature limit like 1.5°C or 2°C relative to the 1850–1900 period. Shaded grey cells indicate values for when historical temperature increase is estimated from a blend of near-surface air temperatures over land and sea ice regions and sea-surface temperatures over oceans.
Notes: *(1) Chapter 1 has assessed historical warming between the 1850–1900 and 2006–2015 periods to be 0.87°C with a ±0.12°C likely (1-standard deviation) range, and global near-surface air temperature to be 0.97°C. The temperature changes from the 2006–2015 period are expressed in changes of global near-surface air temperature. *(2) Historical CO2 emissions since the middle of the 1850–1900 historical base period (mid-1875) are estimated at 1940 GtCO2 (1640–2240 GtCO2, one standard deviation range) until end 2010. Since 1 January 2011, an additional 290 GtCO2 (270–310 GtCO2 , one sigma range) has been emitted until the end of 2017 (Le Quéré et al., 2018). *(3) TCRE: transient climate response to cumulative emissions of carbon, assessed by AR5 to fall likely between 0.8–2.5°C/1000 PgC (Collins et al., 2013), considering a normal distribution consistent with AR5 (Stocker et al., 2013). Values are rounded to the nearest 10 GtCO2 . *(4) Focussing on the impact of various key uncertainties on median budgets for 0.53°C of additional warming. *(5) Earth system feedbacks include CO2 released by permafrost thawing or methane released by wetlands, see main text. *(6) Variations due to different scenario assumptions related to the future evolution of non-CO2 emissions. *(7) The distribution of TCRE is not precisely defined. Here the influence of assuming a lognormal instead of a normal distribution shown. *(8) Historical emissions uncertainty reflects the uncertainty in historical emissions since 1 January 2011. | | | URL: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15_Chapter2_Low_Res.pdf |
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