Recent warming has
been unprecedented in speed, scale, and cause. Last year, we reported on a
study that found the rate of warming since 1900 is 50 times greater than the
rate of cooling in the previous 5000 years, which threatens to destroy the
stable climate that enabled civilization.
The warming is so fast that it’s easy to forget how cold it
used to be just a few decades ago, which is the point of a recent Climate
Central analysis and the awesome xkcd cartoon based on it (above).
We’ve known for a while that the Arctic — which is warming
at twice the rate of Earth as a whole — is now warmer than it has been in at
least 2000 years. As a National Center for Atmospheric Research study found in
2009:
Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level
of any decade in at least 2,000 years, new research indicates. The study, which
incorporates geologic records and computer simulations, provides new evidence
that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions that are
overpowering natural climate patterns.
That is one long hockey stick. But now a new study led by UC
Boulder Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research Associate Director Gifford
Miller takes things way, way back:
Average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic
during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past
44,000 years….
Since radiocarbon dating is only accurate to about 50,000
years and because Earth’s geological record shows it was in a glaciation stage
prior to that time, the indications are that Canadian Arctic temperatures today
have not been matched or exceeded for roughly 120,000 years, Miller said.
“The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of
Arctic Canada is,” said Miller…. “This study really says the warming we are
seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due
to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
A video explaining the study can be found here. This
research answers the key question of whether recent warming exceeded that of
the highest temperatures following the end of the last Ice Age:
The study is the first direct evidence the present warmth in
the Eastern Canadian Arctic exceeds the peak warmth there in the Early
Holocene, when the amount of the sun’s energy reaching the Northern Hemisphere in
summer was roughly 9 percent greater than today, said study leader Gifford
Miller. The Holocene is a geological epoch that began after Earth’s last
glacial period ended roughly 11,700 years ago and which continues today.
And so we have the hockey stick, which countless studies
have now vindicated.
Since the climatologist Michael Mann is most closely
associated with the hockey stick and the unprecedented nature of recent
warming, I asked him for a comment on the new study. He replied:
This study is just one more brick in the wall of evidence
telling us that the planetary warming we are now seeing is without precedent in
the period of human civilization. But we have only seen the tip of the
proverbial iceberg. If we continue with business as usual burning of fossil
fuels, we will see far greater, far more devastating, and potentially
irreversible changes in climate in the decades ahead. This study reminds us of
the urgency of placing limits now on our emission of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.
In case you were wondering what business as usual would
mean, here’s the classic figure:
Temperature change over past 11,300 years (in blue, via
Science, 2013) plus projected warming this century
on humanity’s current emissions path (in red, via recent
literature).
Are we really so myopic a species that we’re going to do
this to ourselves? TOMADA DE ENVIO DE TOMAS POR RED FOROBA
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