Making sense of palaeoclimate sensitivity
(2012) Nature : international weekly journal of science — Vol. 491, p. 683-691 (2012)
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- Abstract
- Many palaeoclimate studies have quantified pre-anthropogenic climate change to calculate climate sensitivity (equilibrium temperature change in response to radiative forcing change), but a lack of consistent methodologies produces a wide range of estimates and hinders comparability of results. Here we present a stricter approach, to improve intercomparison of palaeoclimate sensitivity estimates in a manner compatible with equilibrium projections for future climate change. Over the past 65 million years, this reveals a climate sensitivity (in K W -1 m 2) of 0.3-1.9 or 0.6-1.3 at 95% or 68% probability, respectively. The latter implies a warming of 2.2-4.8 K per doubling of atmospheric CO 2, which agrees with IPCC estimates. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
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Citations
Rohling, E. J., Sluijs, A., Dijkstra, H. A., Köhler, P., Van De Wal, R. S. W., Von Der Heydt, A. S., Beerling, D. J., Berger, A., Bijl, P. K., & Crucifix, M. (2012). Making sense of palaeoclimate sensitivity. Nature : international weekly journal of science, 491, 683-691. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11574 (Original work published 2012)