Isolation of Contributions from Individual Physical Processes to the Lapse Rate Feedback

A climate feedback analysis method based on the surface energy budget, referred to as the surface feedback-response analysis method (SFRAM), is proposed to identify contributions from individual physical processes to the lapse rate feedback. The SFRAM follows a relatively new climate feedback framework that differs from the traditional feedback framework with a top of the atmosphere (TOA) perspective. The SFRAM allows for a quantitative decomposition of total surface temperature change into two parts: (i) partial surface temperature changes due to radiative and non-radiative energy flux perturbations at the surface and (ii) partial temperature changes due to downward thermal radiation perturbations resulting from air temperature changes in response to the atmospheric portions of the radiative and non-radiative energy flux perturbations. The first part includes the direct effects of the external forcing alone and individual feedbacks whereas the second part corresponds to the lapse rate feedback, which is the sum of the indirect contributions of the external forcing alone and individual feedbacks. Our results indicate the indirect effect is much larger than the direct effect.