Global climate and the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) are correlated over recent glacial cycles. The combination of processes responsible for a rise in atmospheric CO2 at the last glacial termination1, 3 (23,000 to 9,000 years ago), however, remains uncertain. Establishing the timing and rate of CO2 changes in the past provides critical insight into the mechanisms that influence the carbon cycle and helps put present and future anthropogenic emissions in context.

We construct the probability density function of global sea level at 2100, estimating that sea level rises larger than 180 cm are less than 5% probable. An upper limit for global sea level rise of 190 cm is assembled by summing the highest estimates of individual sea level rise components simulated by process based models with the RCP8.5 scenario.

A global, observation-based assessment of whole-ecosystem carbon turnover times shows that the overall mean global carbon turnover time is about 23 years and that locally its spatial variability depends on precipitation at least as strongly as on temperature.

We find that many of the Earth's climate variables, including surface temperature, outgoing longwave radiation, cooling rates, and frozen surface extent, are sensitive to far-IR surface emissivity, a largely unconstrained, temporally and spatially heterogeneous scaling factor for the blackbody radiation from the surface at wavelengths between 15 μm and 100 μm. We also describe a previously unidentified mechanism that amplifies high-latitude and high-altitude warming in finding significantly lower values of far-IR emissivity for ocean and desert surfaces than for sea ice and snow.

Many future energy and emission scenarios envisage an increase of bioenergy in the global primary energy mix. In most climate impact assessment models and policies, bioenergy systems are assumed to be carbon neutral, thus ignoring the time lag between CO2 emissions from biomass combustion and CO2 uptake by vegetation. Here, we show that the temperature peak caused by CO2 emissions from bioenergy is proportional to the maximum rate at which emissions occur and is almost insensitive to cumulative emissions.

As the dominant reservoir of heat uptake in the climate system, the world’s oceans provide a critical measure of global climate change. Here, we infer deep-ocean warming in the context of global sea-level rise and Earth’s energy budget between January 2005 and December 2013. Direct measurements of ocean warming above 2,000 m depth explain about 32% of the observed annual rate of global mean sea-level rise.