Data and methods for "Comment on `The impact of recent forcing and ocean heat uptake data on estimates of climate sensitivity'"

Data and methods for our comment paper in Journal of Climate. ABSTRACT: Lewis & Curry (2018) (hereafter LC18) present a method for the estimating the transient climate response (TCR) of the climate system from the temperature change between two time windows - an early baseline period in the 19th century, and a modern period primarily in the 21st century. The results suggest a lower value of TCR than estimates from climate model simulations. Previous studies have identified uncertainty in the historical forcings, the impact of the time evolution of the forcing on temperature response, and observational issues as contributory factors to this disagreement. We investigate a further factor: uncertainty in the bias corrections applied to historical sea surface temperature data. This uncertainty can particularly impact the estimation of variables on decadal timescales, and therefore impact the estimation of TCR using the window method as well as estimates of internal variability. We demonstrate that use of the whole historical record can mitigate the impacts of working with short time windows to some extent, particularly with respect to the early part of the record.

本数据集配套于我们发表于《气候学报》（Journal of Climate）的评论性论文，涵盖该研究的相关数据与方法。摘要：刘易斯与柯里（Lewis & Curry，2018，下文简称LC18）提出了一种基于两个时间窗口间的温度变化，以估算气候系统瞬变气候响应（Transient Climate Response, TCR）的方法：两个窗口分别为19世纪的早期基准期，以及主要位于21世纪的现代观测期。该研究得到的TCR估算值低于气候模式模拟得到的结果。已有研究指出，历史辐射强迫的不确定性、强迫的时间演变对温度响应的影响，以及观测相关问题，是造成该估算结果与模式模拟结果之间分歧的潜在因素。本研究进一步探讨了另一项影响因素：针对历史海表温度（Sea Surface Temperature, SST）数据开展的偏差校正过程中存在的不确定性。这类不确定性会显著影响年代际尺度的变量估算，进而干扰基于窗口法的TCR估算结果与内部变率的估算值。本研究证明，利用完整的历史观测记录可在一定程度上缓解短时间窗口分析带来的负面影响，尤其针对观测记录的早期时段效果更为显著。