Climate change: Earth warmest in 11,000 years
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It’s getting hotter, and much drier. If you haven’t noticed check out that creek bed, you know the one next to the big oak, where you like to hike. Notice anything different? Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. There’s no water in that once babbling brook. This is becoming more and more common. as most of the farm ponds and many of the lakes have dried up thanks to very little rain and warmer than normal temperatures, stark reminders of what’s coming.
Torsten Blackwood – Pool/Getty Images
A new study published Thursday in the journal Science contains some eye-popping numbers regarding global temperature changes over the last few millennia. Per The Wall Street Journal:
New research suggests average global temperatures were higher in the past decade than over most of the previous 11,300 years, a finding that offers a long-term context for assessing modern-day climate change. [Wall Street Journal]
Previous climate research presented a much more condensed snapshot, stretching back 1,500 years max. According to The New York Times, these past studies also concluded “that the rapid temperature spike of the past century, believed to be a consequence of human activity, exceeded any warming episode during those years.”
But this new, expansive experiment — led by Oregon State’s Shaun Marcott — gives us a much wider scope of how Earth’s temperatures have changed, stretching back to a warm period following the last Ice Age known as the Holocene. Scientists claim that this period of increased sunlight, which caused the northern ice sheets to melt, “set the stage for the rise of human civilization” by “permitting a high level of food production” about 8,000 years ago, says The Times.
In their findings, Marcott’s team discovered that it took 11 millennia from the Holocene’s start for the global temperature to increase one degree. After that, it took just another 150 years — basically from the Industrial Revolution till now — for the temperature to rise another degree.
“What’s different is the rate of change,” says Marcott. “What we’ve seen over the past 150 years is much greater than anything we saw in the past 11,000 years.” The team relied on proxy measurements from various sources to piece together a timeline of global temperature estimates — including readings from marine fossils, ice cores, and pollen levels.
So what does it all mean? According to the Journal:
The decade 2000-2009 was one of the warmest since modern record-keeping began. … If the scientists’ forecasts are correct, the planet will be warmer in 2100 than it has been for 11,300 years. [Wall Street Journal]
Story by Chris Gayomali writing for The Week
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It’s getting wetter in England…waaaay more floods and things than ever before.
We’ve nicked America’s water!!!!!…Sorry!!! We’ll give it back!! Honest!!….er…$5 per gallon seems fare?…;-)
One would think that, with warmer temperatures and more evaporation for the oceans, lakes, and rivers, the higher humidity would result in more clouds and ultimately more rain. Also, more clouds raise the albedo of the earth and reflect away more sunlight. But they also hold in more heat(the greenhouse effect) so perhaps the climate is not as self-regulating as it would seem. Or maybe we don’t have all the factors as well figured out as we would like.
Climate calculation is much more complex than most understand. Even supercomputers must be given all the correct factors and have them weighted properly to be accurate. It’s the old computer tech’s saying, “GIGO” (Garbage In Garbage Out)
Somebody needs to tell the republican idiots and maybe we can start to do something but I think its too late.
Very true James. I saw an interview a couple of years ago with a top climate guy who said our computers are a big help, but if you really want to know if the planet is warming just step outside.
Here, because there is so little difference between winter and summer, I always say that, if I want to know what season it is, I look at the calendar. 🙂
In reality, this time of year, the sun comes up much more to the south and heats the side of the building with my computer room so I have to use the a/c in the mornings, but not after lunch.