Time lag between changes in global temperature and atmospheric CO2 content under anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and CH4 into the atmosphere

Abstract

Previously, it was shown that the time lag between changes in global temperature T and atmospheric CO2 content q CO2 generally does not characterize cause-and-effect relationships in the Earth system. In particular, in the case of non-greenhouse radiative forcing the sign of this lag depends on the time scale of the forcing. In this paper, the time lag between changes in T and q CO2 under the external emissions of CO2 and CH4 into the atmosphere is studied. It was found that if the time scale of external emissions is large enough changes in q CO2 are lagging the corresponding changes in T, though the former is the main cause of the latter.