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Making sense of palaeoclimate sensitivity

Nature volume 491, pages 683–691 (2012)Cite this article

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An Erratum to this article was published on 16 January 2013

This article has been updated

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 m2) 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 CO2, which agrees with IPCC estimates.

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Figure 1: Typical timescales of different feedbacks relevant to equilibrium climate sensitivity, as discussed in this work.
Figure 2: Illustration of variability of climate sensitivity using a calculation of S [CO2,LI] , as defined in this work, for the past 800 kyr.
Figure 3: Evaluation of results from Tables 1 and 2 .
Figure 4: Equilibrium response of the global temperature as a function of CO 2 concentrations, based on three different approaches.

Change history

  • 16 January 2013

    Nature 491, 683–691 (2012); doi:10.1038/nature11574 The surname of author V. Masson-Delmotte was misspelled as Masson-Demotte. In Table 1 of this Perspective, the ‘Source’ for ‘Label in Fig. 3’ entry 13 should be ref. 61 (not ref. 65). In addition, the x-axis labels of Fig. 3c were misplaced. Figure1 shows the corrected panel and the original Perspective has been corrected online.

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Acknowledgements

This Perspective arose from the first PALAEOSENS workshop in March 2011. We thank the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for funding and hosting this workshop in Amsterdam, PAGES for their support, and J. Gregory for discussions. This study was supported by the UK-NERC consortium iGlass (NE/I009906/1), and 2012 Australian Laureate Fellowship FL120100050. D.J.B., E.J.R. and P.V. were supported by Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Awards. A.S. thanks the European Research Council for ERC starting grant 259627, and M.H. acknowledges NSF P2C2 grant 0902882. Some of the work was supported by grant 243908 ‘Past4Future’ of the EU’s seventh framework programme; this is Past4Future contribution number 30.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK.,

    E. J. Rohling, G. L. Foster & H. Pälike

  2. Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia.,

    E. J. Rohling

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 4, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands.,

    A. Sluijs, P. K. Bijl & L. J. Lourens

  4. Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, 3584 CC Utrecht, The Netherlands.,

    H. A. Dijkstra, R. S. W. van de Wal & A. S. von der Heydt

  5. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), PO Box 12 01 61, 27515 Bremerhaven, Germany.,

    P. Köhler

  6. Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.,

    D. J. Beerling

  7. Georges Lemaitre Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute–Université catholique de Louvain, Chemin du Cyclotron 2, Box L7.01.11, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.,

    A. Berger & M. Crucifix

  8. Department of Geosciences, 611 North Pleasant Street, 233 Morrill Science Center, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 01003-9297, Massachusetts, USA

    R. DeConto

  9. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, PO Box 201, 3730 AE De Bilt, The Netherlands.,

    S. S. Drijfhout

  10. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, PO Box 208109, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8109, USA.,

    A. Fedorov & M. Pagani

  11. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), PO Box 601203, 14412 Potsdam, Germany.,

    A. Ganopolski

  12. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, New York 10025, USA.,

    J. Hansen

  13. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, 10964, New York, USA

    B. Hönisch

  14. Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands.,

    H. Hooghiemstra

  15. Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA.,

    M. Huber

  16. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, 20 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.,

    P. Huybers

  17. Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Universitätstrasse 16, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.,

    R. Knutti

  18. Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9630, USA.,

    D. W. Lea

  19. School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK.,

    D. Lunt & P. Valdes

  20. LSCE (IPSL/CEA-CNRS-UVSQ), UMR 8212, LCEA Saclay, 91 191 Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France.,

    V. Masson-Delmotte

  21. Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán, Unidad Ciencias del Agua, Cancún, Quintana Roo, 77500, México.,

    M. Medina-Elizalde

  22. National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO Box 3000, Boulder, Colorado 80307-3000, USA.,

    B. Otto-Bliesner

  23. MARUM, University of Bremen, Leobener Straße, 28359 Bremen, Germany.,

    H. Pälike

  24. Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Free University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1085, NL1081HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.,

    H. Renssen

  25. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan University, Middletown, 06459, Connecticut, USA

    D. L. Royer

  26. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queen’s Road, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK.,

    M. Siddall

  27. Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, 95064, California, USA

    J. C. Zachos

  28. Department of Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1000 Pope Road, MSB 629 Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA.,

    E. J. Rohling & R. E. Zeebe

Consortia

PALAEOSENS Project Members

  • E. J. Rohling
  • , E. J. Rohling
  • , A. Sluijs
  • , H. A. Dijkstra
  • , P. Köhler
  • , R. S. W. van de Wal
  • , A. S. von der Heydt
  • , D. J. Beerling
  • , A. Berger
  • , P. K. Bijl
  • , M. Crucifix
  • , R. DeConto
  • , S. S. Drijfhout
  • , A. Fedorov
  • , G. L. Foster
  • , A. Ganopolski
  • , J. Hansen
  • , B. Hönisch
  • , H. Hooghiemstra
  • , M. Huber
  • , P. Huybers
  • , R. Knutti
  • , D. W. Lea
  • , L. J. Lourens
  • , D. Lunt
  • , V. Masson-Delmotte
  • , M. Medina-Elizalde
  • , B. Otto-Bliesner
  • , M. Pagani
  • , H. Pälike
  • , H. Renssen
  • , D. L. Royer
  • , M. Siddall
  • , P. Valdes
  • , J. C. Zachos
  •  & R. E. Zeebe

Contributions

E.J.R., A.S. and H.A.D. initiated the PALAEOSENS workshop, and led the drafting of this study together with P.K., A.S.v.d.H. and R.S.W.v.d.W. The other authors contributed specialist insights, discussions and feedback.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to E. J. Rohling.

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Competing interests

The author declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Text and Data, Supplementary References, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figures 1-6. (PDF 4926 kb)

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PALAEOSENS Project Members. Making sense of palaeoclimate sensitivity. Nature 491, 683–691 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11574

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11574

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