A tighter constraint on Earth-system sensitivity from long-term temperature and carbon-cycle observations

Tony E. Wong (), Ying Cui (), Dana L. Royer and Klaus Keller
Additional contact information
Tony E. Wong: Rochester Institute of Technology
Ying Cui: Montclair State University
Dana L. Royer: Wesleyan University
Klaus Keller: The Pennsylvania State University

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The long-term temperature response to a given change in CO2 forcing, or Earth-system sensitivity (ESS), is a key parameter quantifying our understanding about the relationship between changes in Earth’s radiative forcing and the resulting long-term Earth-system response. Current ESS estimates are subject to sizable uncertainties. Long-term carbon cycle models can provide a useful avenue to constrain ESS, but previous efforts either use rather informal statistical approaches or focus on discrete paleoevents. Here, we improve on previous ESS estimates by using a Bayesian approach to fuse deep-time CO2 and temperature data over the last 420 Myrs with a long-term carbon cycle model. Our median ESS estimate of 3.4 °C (2.6-4.7 °C; 5-95% range) shows a narrower range than previous assessments. We show that weaker chemical weathering relative to the a priori model configuration via reduced weatherable land area yields better agreement with temperature records during the Cretaceous. Research into improving the understanding about these weathering mechanisms hence provides potentially powerful avenues to further constrain this fundamental Earth-system property.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23543-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-23543-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23543-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().