State-dependent climate sensitivity in past warm climates and its implications for future climate projections.

ABSTRACT: Projections of future climate depend critically on refined estimates of climate sensitivity. Recent progress in temperature proxies dramatically increases the magnitude of warming reconstructed from early Paleogene greenhouse climates and demands a close examination of the forcing and feedback mechanisms that maintained this warmth and the broad dynamic range that these paleoclimate records attest to. Here, we show that several complementary resolutions to these questions are possible in the context of model simulations using modern and early Paleogene configurations. We find that (i) changes in boundary conditions representative of slow "Earth system" feedbacks play an important role in maintaining elevated early Paleogene temperatures, (ii) radiative forcing by carbon dioxide deviates si

SUBMITTER: Caballero R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3761583 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature