Past climates inform our future

Jessica E. Tierney*, Christopher J. Poulsen, Isabel P. Montañez, Tripti Bhattacharya, Ran Feng, Heather L. Ford, Bärbel Hönisch, Gordon N. Inglis, Sierra V. Petersen, Navjit Sagoo, Clay R. Tabor, Kaustubh Thirumalai, Jiang Zhu, Natalie J. Burls, Gavin L. Foster, Yves Goddéris, Brian T. Huber, Linda C. Ivany, Sandra Kirtland Turner, Daniel J. LuntJennifer C. McElwain, Benjamin J.W. Mills, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, Andy Ridgwell, Yi Ge Zhang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview article (Academic Journal)peer-review

340 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

As the world warms, there is a profound need to improve projections of climate change. Although the latest Earth system models offer an unprecedented number of features, fundamental uncertainties continue to cloud our view of the future. Past climates provide the only opportunity to observe how the Earth system responds to high carbon dioxide, underlining a fundamental role for paleoclimatology in constraining future climate change. Here, we review the relevancy of paleoclimate information for climate prediction and discuss the prospects for emerging methodologies to further insights gained from past climates. Advances in proxy methods and interpretations pave the way for the use of past climates for model evaluation—a practice that we argue should be widely adopted.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbereaay3701
JournalScience
Volume370
Issue number6517
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Nov 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.

Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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  • SWEET NERC Large Grant

    Lunt, D. (Principal Investigator)

    1/10/1730/09/23

    Project: Research

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