The ultrafast kinetics of CO rebinding to carbon monoxide oxidation activator protein (ChCooA) are measured over a wide temperature range and compared with the kinetics of CO binding in other heme systems such as myoglobin (Mb) and hemoglobin (Hb). The Arrhenius prefactor for CO binding to ChCooA and protoheme (similar to 10(11) s(-1)) is similar to what is found for spin-allowed NO binding to heme proteins and is several orders of magnitude larger than the prefactor of Mb and Hb (similar to 10(9) s(-1)). This indicates that the CO binding reaction is adiabatic, in contrast to the commonly held view that it is nonadiabatic due to spin-forbidden (Delta S = 2) selection rules. Under the adiabatic condition, entropic factors, rather than spin-selection rules, are the source of the reduced Arrhenius prefactors associated with CO binding in Mb and Hb. The kinetic response of ChCooA-CO is nonexponential at all temperatures, including 298 K, and is described quantitatively using a distribution of enthalpic rebinding barriers associated with heterogeneity in the heme doming conformation. Above the solvent glass transition (T-g similar to 180 K), the rebinding progress slows as temperature increases, and this is ascribed to an evolution of the distribution toward increased heme doming and larger enthalpic barriers. Between T-g and similar to 60 K, the nonexponential rebinding slows down as the temperature is lowered and the survival fraction follows the predictions expected for a quenched barrier distribution. Below similar to 60 K the rebinding kinetics do not follow these predictions unless quantum mechanical tunneling along the heme doming coordinate is also included as an active channel for CO binding.