Using the Past to Predict the Future?

The article discusses a report in the same issue by Schmittner and colleagues regarding the use of paleoclimate data to estimate future climate change. Researchers believe that observing climate responses to past long-term events can help to predict the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), or the equilibrium response of surface temperature to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Reconstructions of ocean and land temperatures from the Last Glacial Maximum were used to determine the ECS range for that time period and help predict likely ESC values for recent climate data.