"Earth More Sensitive To CO2 Than Previously Thought"

"In the long term, the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week.

The results show that components of the Earth's climate system that vary over long timescales - such as land-ice and vegetation - have an important effect on this temperature sensitivity, but these factors are often neglected in current climate models.

Dan Lunt, from the University of Bristol, and colleagues compared results from a global climate model to temperature reconstructions of the Earth's environment three million years ago when global temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations were relatively high. The temperature reconstructions were derived using data from three million-year-old sediments on the ocean floor."

SPX had the story December 7, 2009.