Warm/cool epochs over past 2000 years were regional until 20th century warming

Percentages of earth’s surface experiencing abnormal warm (red shading) and cold (blue shading) temperatures. Shading intensity indicates the magnitude of warmth and cold. a, Annual data. b, 51-year averaged data.

Over the last 2000 years Europe has experienced centennial scale cool and warm epochs including the Little Ice Age (1300 and 1850 CE), the Mediaeval Warm Period (800–1200 CE), the Dark Ages Cold Period (400–800 CE) and the Roman Warm Period (250 BCE to 400 CE). A recent analysis has generated spatial temporal temperature reconstructions covering the entire globe for the past 2,000 years. The research found no evidence that preindustrial cold and warm periods recorded in Europe and elsewhere extended over the entire globe. By contrast, the warmest period of the past 2,000 years occurred during the twentieth century for more than 98 per cent of the globe.

No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era, Raphael Neukom, Nathan Steiger, Juan José Gómez-Navarro, Jianghao Wang & Johannes P. Werner, Nature, volume 571, pages 550–554 (2019).

From Our Files

Evidence of biological feedback driving warming at ice age terminations

It is known that orbital forcing is involved in glacial/deglacial cycles but is insufficient by itself to explain the glacial/deglacial cycles. This study argues that a biological feedback mechanism kicks in when a threshold is reached and together with orbital forcing results in the sustained and rapidly increasing CO2 and surface temperature of a deglaciation.

Southern Ocean outgassing initial source of rising CO2 during the last deglaciation

During the first pulse of increasing atmospheric CO2 at the beginning of the last deglaciation the carbon-13 ratio dropped precipitously indicating that a source of the CO2 was a large pool of carbon of organic origin. Comparison with other data including the atmospheric carbon-14 record point at outgassing from Southern Ocean deep water as the source of the CO2 increase in this early period of the deglaciation.

Black carbon in the atmosphere infographic

Black carbon is the second most important anthropogenic contribution to climate warming

A reanalysis of the effect of black carbon emissions has found that it is second only to carbon dioxide emissions in its warming impact on the climate. Together carbon dioxide, black carbon, and methane emissions represent the anthropogenic sources with the largest impact on Earth’s climate.

Comparison of temperature and CO2 from Vostok ice cores

Close correlation of temperature and greenhouse gas concentrations over the last four glacial-interglacial cycles

In January 1998, a collaborative ice-drilling project between Russia, the United States, and France at the Russian Vostok revealed that over the past four cycles atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide correlates closely with Antarctic air-temperature. The analysis also suggests a sequence of events that is characteristic of every termination; warming by orbital forcing, then increasing greenhouse gases, and followed by ice sheet melting and reduced albedo.