Anthropogenic and natural causes of climate change

• Published in: Climatic change Vol. 122; no. 1-2; pp. 257 - 269
• Main Authors: Stern, David I., Kaufmann, Robert K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 2014; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aerosols; Air pollution; Anthropogenic factors; Atmospheric aerosols; Atmospheric Sciences; Black carbon; Carbon; Causality; Climate change; Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts; Climatic data; Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; External geophysics; Global climate; Greenhouse effect; Greenhouse gases; Hypotheses; Meteorology; Radiative forcing; Regression analysis; Specifications; Statistical power; Time series; Variables; Ocean Heat Content; Granger Causality; Black Carbon; Solar Irradiance; Granger Causality Test; Atmospheric temperature; global change; radiative transfer; solar activity; climate warming; Geogenic factor; Forcing; Causality; volcanism; climate change; Anthropogenic factor
• ISSN: 0165-0009; 1573-1480
• DOI: 10.1007/s10584-013-1007-x

We test for causality between radiative forcing and temperature using multivariate time series models and Granger causality tests that are robust to the non-stationary (trending) nature of global climate data. We find that both natural and anthropogenic forcings cause temperature change and also that temperature causes greenhouse gas concentration changes. Although the effects of greenhouse gases and volcanic forcing are robust across model specifications, we cannot detect any effect of black carbon on temperature, the effect of changes in solar irradiance is weak, and the effect of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols may be only around half that usually attributed to them.