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The climate system may be less sensitive to greenhouse-gas warming than many models have predicted.

Nathan Gillett and his co-workers at Environment Canada in Victoria, British Columbia, analysed how well the latest Canadian Earth System Model tracked temperature changes attributable to volcanoes, man-made aerosols and rising greenhouse-gas emissions. They adjusted the model using temperature records from 1851 to 2010 — 60 years of data more than most previous analyses. The model predicted a short-term increase of 1.3–1.8 °C for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which is low in the range of estimates from previous forecasts.

Under various scenarios, the authors' model forecasts warming of 1.2–4.3 °C by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial times.

Geophys. Res. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GL050226 (2012)