Earth Syst. Dynam., 8, 235–253, 2017 www.earth-syst-dynam.net/8/235/2017/ doi:10.5194/esd-8-235-2017 © Author(s) 2017. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Accounting for the climate–carbon feedback in emission metrics Thomas Gasser1,2,a, Glen P. Peters2, Jan S. Fuglestvedt2, William J. Collins3, Drew T. Shindell4, and Philippe Ciais1 1Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, Université Paris-Saclay, CEA – CNRS – UVSQ, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France 2Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo (CICERO), 0349 Oslo, Norway 3Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BB, UK 4Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA anow at: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), 2361 Laxenburg, Austria Correspondence to: Thomas Gasser (
[email protected]) Received: 4 November 2016 – Discussion started: 10 November 2016 Accepted: 20 March 2017 – Published: 10 April 2017 Abstract. Most emission metrics have previously been inconsistently estimated by including the climate– carbon feedback for the reference gas (i.e. CO2) but not the other species (e.g. CH4). In the fifth assessment report of the IPCC, a first attempt was made to consistently account for the climate–carbon feedback in emission metrics. This attempt was based on only one study, and therefore the IPCC concluded that more research was needed. Here, we carry out this research. First, using the simple Earth system model OSCAR v2.2, we establish a new impulse response function for the climate–carbon feedback. Second, we use this impulse response func- tion to provide new estimates for the two most common metrics: global warming potential (GWP) and global temperature-change potential (GTP).