Observed warming is driven by emissions from human activities, with greenhouse gas warming partly masked by aerosol cooling
Greenhouse gases would have caused more warming than has been observed, but emissions of particulates (aerosols) offset some of their effects. Natural factors cannot explain the observed warming (middle panel).
The warming can be further broken down into contributions from a wide range of emission types (right panel).
Source: IPCC AR6 WGI Summary for Policymakers Fig. 2
@ed_hawkins Could you explain conceptually the difference between attribution studies and radiative forcing studies?
@ljbo Attribution studies tend to use climate model simulations of the historical period with and without various factors included to understand the simulated response to combinations of factors. Radiative forcing studies tend to focus on the physics of particular components, often using simpler models.
@ed_hawkins I see, thanks. Would you know some papers that illustrate each approach particularly well? I might have misunderstood/missed it but the IPCC report doesn’t make that distinction clear.
@ljbo Chapter 3 covers the attribution science and Chapter 7 includes the radiative forcing and climate response components. Or the Technical Summary includes shorter versions in sections TS.1 and TS.3: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/