Nature 347, 139 - 145 (13 September 1990); doi:10.1038/347139a0

The ice-core record: climate sensitivity and future greenhouse warming

C. Lorius, J. Jouzel, D. Raynaud, J. Hansen & H. Le Treut

Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Geophysique de I'Environment, BP96, 38402 St Martin d'Heres Cedex, France. J. Jouzel is at the Laboratoire de Geochimie Isotopique, CEA/DSM Centre d'Etudes Nucleaires de Saclay, 91191 Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France. J. Hansen is at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center's Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, New York 10025, USA. H. Le Treut is at the Laboratoire de Meterologie Dynamique, 24 Rue Lhomond, 75234 Paris Cedex, France.

The prediction of future greenhouse-gas-induced warming depends critically on the sensitivity of Earth's climate to increasing atmospheric concentrations of these gases. Data from cores drilled in polar ice sheets show a remarkable correlation between past glacial–interglacial temperature changes and the inferred atmospheric concentration of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. These and other palaeoclimate data are used to assess the role of greenhouse gases in explaining past global climate change, and the validity of models predicting the effect of increasing concentrations of such gases in the atmosphere.

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