Forcingsdata

Forcingsdata is a dataset or collection of data that records external drivers of Earth’s energy balance used in climate research. It aggregates information on radiative forcing and related properties for natural and anthropogenic forcing agents. Core components typically include greenhouse gas concentrations and their effective radiative forcing, aerosol properties (absorption, scattering, and indirect effects), volcanic aerosol, solar irradiance variations, ozone changes, and land-use/land-cover changes.

Data in forcingsdata are often provided as time series, with global or regional coverage and resolutions ranging from annual to monthly, and from coarse to finer spatial scales depending on the contributing sources. Common units include watts per square meter (W/m^2) for forcing, parts per million or billion (ppm, ppbv) for gas concentrations, and sometimes percent or reflectance for certain aerosol properties. Formats frequently include netCDF, CSV, and HDF5, with metadata following standard conventions to support interoperability among models and analyses.

Typical sources for forcingsdata include climate model intercomparison projects, IPCC assessment reports, and observational or reanalysis products that inventory forcing agents over time. These data are used to drive climate model simulations, build scenario ensembles, and support attribution studies and policy analyses.

Key challenges involve uncertainties in aerosol forcing and indirect effects, differences among definitions of forcing components (instantaneous versus effective), and data gaps in historical observations. Users must consider the provenance, resolution, and methodological assumptions when integrating forcingsdata into analyses.

See also: Radiative forcing, Effective radiative forcing, CMIP, SSPs, RCPs.