München 2019 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik

UP 10: Poster session

UP 10.1: Poster

Thursday, March 21, 2019, 16:30–18:30, HS 22

Estimating global warming from anthropogenic heat emissions — •Peter Steiglechner, Maria Martin, and Georg Feulner — Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung (PIK)

The consumption of primary energy from sources such as fossil or nuclear fuels and the consequent dissipation to heat induces a direct climate warming, the so called anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) forcing.

The current global AHF is negligibly small compared to the indirect forcing from greenhouse gas emissions. However, by continuing the historically observed exponential growth of primary energy consumption, e.g. fueled by fusion power, the impacts of the AHF can become a relevant factor for anthropogenic post-greenhouse gas climate change even on the global scale.

We estimated the global warming from different scenarios of growing AHF forcing in climate models ranging from conceptual Energy Balance Models to a climate model of intermediate complexity. The associated feedbacks, in particular the ice-albedo feedback and the ocean heat uptake, as well as the influence of the heterogeneity of the forcing were examined. The global mean temperature response from the AHF today is of the order of 0.010 − 0.016  K. A transient tenfold increase of this forcing heats up the Earth System additionally by roughly 0.1 − 0.2  K in the models used in this work.

The transition to a renewable energy mix, explicitly without nuclear power, however, largely eliminates the increasing AHF forcing and its climate impacts, independent of the growth of energy production.