Forcing closure suggests stronger aerosol forcing and higher climate sensitivity than the consensus.

Authors

Tianle Yuan, Hua Song, Senne Van Loon, Ryan Kramer, Lazaros Oreopoulos, Piers M Forster

Published in

Science advances. Volume 12. Issue 42. Pages eaeh6401. Oct 16, 2026. Epub Oct 16, 2026.

Abstract

Forcing together with radiative responses and natural variability has sharply increased Earth's energy imbalance (EEI), a key driver of climate change, between 2003 and 2023. Declining anthropogenic aerosol emissions and increasing greenhouse gas concentrations are the leading contributors to the forcing. However, observation-based and model-based forcing estimates disagree on the magnitude of aerosol forcing, particularly for effective radiative forcing from aerosol-cloud interactions (ERF_ACI). Here, we show that two independent observation-based estimates of forcing trends achieve unexpectedly good closure between 2003 and 2023. The corresponding model-based trend is within the uncertainty range of observations but substantially smaller, with most of the difference due to models' underestimation of cloud fraction adjustment to aerosols. Our results suggest a prominent role of aerosols in the recent EEI increase and stronger total historical ERF_ACI and higher equilibrium climate sensitivity than the current consensus, with a likely range between 2.8° and 4.8°C.

PMID:
42886772
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 17 Oct 2026.

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