Preliminary experiments on the climatic effect of an increase of the atmospheric CO2 , using a thermodynamic mode

Abstract

A thermodynamic model that includes the annual cycle of climate and an ocean mixed layer is applied to compute the warming due to a doubling of the atmospheric C02 . The model uses a simplified new approach to deal with the variations of the heating introduced by changing the atmospheric C02 The computed annual average increase in the Northern Hemisphere is .7°Cwith values of 8ºC in Spring and Summer and 6ºC in Winter and Fall. However, when the variations of the heating different from radiation (vertical transport of sensible heat, evaporation at the surface and heat of condensation of water vapor on the clouds) are neglected, the computed annual average increase is 1.4°C. The ocean mixed layer is shown to play an important role in the computations.