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Palaeoclimate

Climate sensitivity in a warmer world

Nature volume 518, pages 46–47 (2015)Cite this article

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Comparison of climate records from the Pliocene and Pleistocene geological epochs of the past five million years suggests that positive climate feedbacks are not strengthened during warm climate intervals. See Article p.49

A major concern in projecting future climate change using models is that positive climate feedbacks might become enhanced in a warm climate, accelerating future warming in response to rising greenhouse-gas levels. Climate feedbacks are changes in atmospheric or surface properties induced by climate change that magnify or diminish the overall temperature response. Their aggregate strength is represented by the climate sensitivity, which is the ratio of observed warming to climate forcing, such as increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Warm intervals of Earth's recent geological past, which can be studied through climate proxies, provide a basis for testing the response of climate sensitivity to warming. On page 49 of this issue, Martínez-Botí et al.1 use improved proxy atmospheric CO2 data to compare climate-sensitivity determinations from the warm Pliocene epoch, 5.3 million to 2.6 million years (Myr) ago, to those from the cold, extensively glaciated Pleistocene epoch, 2.6 to 0.012 Myr ago. They find that climate sensitivity differs little between these vastly dissimilar times, once the influence of ice sheets is removed.

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Figure 1: Then and now.

George Rinaldino Teichmann, www.iceagebeasts.com, Courtesy Canadian Museum of Nature Martin Lipman

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  1. David W. Lea is in the Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9630, USA.,

    David W. Lea

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  1. David W. Lea
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Correspondence to David W. Lea.

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Lea, D. Climate sensitivity in a warmer world. Nature 518, 46–47 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/518046b

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