Late Miocene cooling coupled to carbon dioxide with Pleistocene-like climate sensitivity

Earth’s climate cooled markedly during the late Miocene from 12 to 5 million years ago, with far-reaching consequences for global ecosystems. However, the driving forces of these changes remain controversial. A major obstacle to progress is the uncertainty over the role played by greenhouse gas radiative forcing. Here we present boron isotope compositions for planktic foraminifera, which record carbon dioxide change for the interval of most rapid cooling, the late Miocene cooling event between 7 and 5 Ma. Our record suggests that CO2 declined by some 100 ppm over this two-million-year-long interval to a minimum at approximately 5.9 Ma. Having accounted for non-CO2 greenhouse gasses and slow climate feedbacks, we estimate global mean surface temperature change for a doubling of CO2—equilibrium climate sensitivity—to be 3.9 °C (1.8–6.7 °C at 95% confidence) on the basis of comparison of our record of radiative forcing from CO2 with a record of global mean surface temperature change. We conclude that changes in CO2 and climate were closely coupled during the latest Miocene and that equilibrium climate sensitivity was within range of estimates for the late Pleistocene, other intervals of the Cenozoic and the twenty-first century as presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate sensitivity in the late Miocene was comparable to the late Pleistocene and twenty-first century, with cooling at the time coupled to declining carbon dioxide, according to a CO2 record determined from boron isotopes in planktic foraminifera