The effect of human activity on radiative forcing of climate change: a review of recent developments

Human activity has perturbed the Earthʹs energy balance by altering the properties of the atmosphere and the surface. This perturbation is of a size that would be expected to lead to significant changes in climate. In recent years, an increasing number of possible human-related climate change mechanisms have begun to be quantified. This paper reviews developments in radiative forcing that have occurred since the second assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and proposes modifications to the values of global-mean radiative forcings since pre-industrial times given by IPCC. The forcing mechanisms which are considered here include those due to changes in concentrations of well-mixed greenhouse gases, tropospheric and stratospheric ozone, aerosols composed of sulphate, soot, organics and mineral dust (including their direct and indirect effects), and surface albedo. For many of these mechanisms, the size, spatial pattern and, for some, even the sign of their effect remain uncertain. Studies which have attributed observed climate change to human activity have considered only a subset of these mechanisms; their conclusions may not prove to be robust when a broader set is included.