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| | Climate change: some basics |
 | | Given some perturbation like a change in greenhouse gas or aerosol levels, radiative forcing is estimated with tropospheric and surface temperatures (the response of which takes decades) _kept fixed_ at their unperturbed values [IPCC 94, p 169-71]. |
 | | To further complicate matters, cloud properties may change with a changing climate, and human-made aerosols may confound the effect of greenhouse gas forcing on clouds. |
 | | Rapid changes in atmospheric circulation, of ocean currents, in ecosystem functioning, or in the West Antarctic ice sheet's behavior may not be likely, yet such risks can, at present, neither be excluded nor quantified. |
| www.faqs.org /faqs/sci/climate-change/basics (7932 words) |
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