Short-lived climate forcers

Environmental risk management - Conference of the Parties - emissions - greenhouse gases.

(SLCFs).

Short-lived climate forcers are a set of chemically and physically reactive compounds which affect climate and are, in most cases, also air pollutants.

Their atmospheric lifetime is typically shorter than two decades and sometimes only persist in the atmosphere from a few hours to a couple of months.

SLCFs include aerosols such as hydrofluorcarbons, and chemically reactive gases such as methane, ozone, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and ammonia.

They can have either a cooling or warming effect on climate, and they also affect precipitation and other climate variables.

While SLCFs account for far less of the total volume of annual greenhouse gas emissions than carbon dioxide, they nonetheless cause around 40% percent of the total warming caused by the greenhouse effect.

See also

• Carbon dioxide
• Climate change
• Climate change: testing the resilience of corporates’ creditworthiness to natural catastrophes
• Climate change adaptation
• Climate change mitigation
• Climate finance
• Climate risk
• Conference of the Parties
• Conference of the Parties - historical milestones
• COP27
• COP28
• COP29
• Emissions
• Fossil fuel
• Global Cooling Pledge
• Global Methane Pledge
• Green Climate Fund
• Greenhouse effect
• Greenhouse gas
• G7
• Hydrocarbons
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Kyoto Protocol
• Loss and damage
• Methane
• Methane Roadmap Action Programme (M-RAP)
• Net zero
• New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG)
• Paris Agreement
• Risk management
• Super pollutants
• Transition
• United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
• United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Other resources

• Short-lived Climate Forcers - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Super Pollutants 101, the Center for American Progress