A tighter constraint on Earth-system sensitivity from long-term temperature and carbon-cycle observations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2021
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
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.
DOI
10.1038/s41467-021-23543-9
Journal ISSN / Book ISBN
85106893091 (Scopus)
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Wong, Tony E.; Cui, Ying; Royer, Dana L.; and Keller, Klaus, "A tighter constraint on Earth-system sensitivity from long-term temperature and carbon-cycle observations" (2021). Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 744.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/earth-environ-studies-facpubs/744
Published Citation
Wong, T. E., Cui, Y., Royer, D. L., & Keller, K. (2021). A tighter constraint on Earth-system sensitivity from long-term temperature and carbon-cycle observations. Nature communications, 12(1), 3173.
Comments
This open access article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.