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The Earth’s climate has varied considerably throughout its history. Periodic and episodic natural changes caused by natural climate forcings such as orbital variations and volcanic eruptions, and amplified by feedback processes intrinsic to the climate system, have induced substantial changes in planetary climate on a range of timescales. Multiple independent lines of investigation have provided increasingly compelling evidence that human activities have significantly altered the Earth’s climate since the industrial revolution (Stocker et al. 2013). A distinctive aspect of the present-day climate change is the rapid pace at which it is proceeding relative to that of natural variations alone; a pace that is unprecedented in the history of modern civilization. The Earth’s energy budget, which is the balance between the energy that the Earth receives from the Sun and the energy that it radiates back into space, is a key factor …