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Concept
Climate change feedback
Summary
Climate change feedbacks are effects of global warming that amplify or diminish the effect of forces that initially cause the warming. Positive feedbacks enhance global warming while negative feedbacks weaken it. Feedbacks are important in the understanding of climate change because they play an important part in determining the sensitivity of the climate to warming forces. Climate forcings and feedbacks together determine how much and how fast the climate changes. Large positive feedbacks can lead to tipping points—abrupt or irreversible changes in the climate system—depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change.
The main positive feedback in global warming is the tendency of warming to increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, which in turn leads to further warming. Positive climate feedbacks include the carbon cycle positive feedbacks which include arctic methane release from thawing permafrost peat bogs and hydrates, abrupt increases in atmospheric methane, decomposition, peat decomposition, rainforest drying, forest fires, desertification. Other positive climate feedbacks include cloud feedback, ice–albedo feedback and gas release.
With regards to negative climate feedbacks, they can be listed as follows: Carbon cycle negative feedbacks (role of oceans, chemical weathering, primary production through photosynthesis) and blackbody radiation. The main negative feedback or "cooling response" comes from the Stefan–Boltzmann law, the amount of heat radiated from the Earth into space changes with the fourth power of the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere. However, it is typically not considered a feedback.
Observations and modeling studies indicate that globally the positive feedbacks outweigh the negative feedbacks, indicating a net positive feedback to warming.
Climate systempositive feedback and negative feedback
In climate science, a feedback that amplifies an initial warming is called a positive feedback. On the other hand, a feedback that reduces an initial warming is called a negative feedback.
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