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Editor's Highlight
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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS,
VOL. 33,
L10702,
doi:10.1029/2005GL025044,
2006
Positive feedback between global warming and atmospheric CO2 concentration inferred from past climate change
Marten Scheffer
Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen,
Netherlands
Victor Brovkin
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany
Peter M. Cox
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Winfrith, Dorset, UK
Abstract
There is good evidence that higher global temperatures will promote a rise of greenhouse gas levels, implying a positive feedback
which will increase the effect of anthropogenic emissions on global temperatures. However, the magnitude of this effect predicted
by the available models remains highly uncertain, due to the accumulation of uncertainties in the processes thought to be
involved. Here we present an alternative way of estimating the magnitude of the feedback effect based on reconstructed past
changes. Linking this information with the mid-range Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimation of the greenhouse
gas effect on temperature we suggest that the feedback of global temperature on atmospheric CO2 will promote warming by an extra 15–78% on a century-scale. This estimate may be conservative as we did not account for synergistic
effects of likely temperature moderated increase in other greenhouse gases. Our semi-empirical approach independently supports
process based simulations suggesting that feedback may cause a considerable boost in warming.
Received 25
October
2005;
accepted 14
February
2006;
published 26
May
2006.
Index Terms: 0428 Biogeosciences: Carbon cycling (4806); 0466 Biogeosciences: Modeling; 0315 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Biosphere/atmosphere interactions (0426, 1610); 1622 Global Change: Earth system modeling (1225).
Read Full Article (file size: 667980 bytes) Cited by
Citation: Scheffer, M., V. Brovkin, and P. M. Cox
(2006),
Positive feedback between global warming and atmospheric CO2 concentration inferred from past climate change,
Geophys. Res. Lett.,
33,
L10702,
doi:10.1029/2005GL025044.
Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.
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