Earth entering period of fastest climate change seen in last 1,000 years

[The Don]

Earth entering period of fastest climate change seen in last 1,000 years

The Earth is entering a period of climate change faster than in the last 1,000 years, suggests an analysis of the planet's climate that focused on decades instead of centuries.

Temperatures fluctuated by 0.2 deg c in the last 1,000 years but went up to 0.4 deg per decade in the last 40 years.

By 2020 the warming will be much more than in the last 2,000 years and rise further if current trends continue.

Europe, North America and the Arctic will feel the transition first. In the Arctic the temperature can see a 1.1 deg rise by 2040.

The study examined historical and projected changes over decades to determine the temperature trends that will be felt by humans alive today.

Steve Smith and colleagues at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory published a paper based on their study in Nature Climate Change.

"We focused on changes over 40-year periods, which is similar to the lifetime of houses and human-built infrastructure such as buildings and roads," said lead author Smith. "In the near term, we're going to have to adapt to these changes."

To examine rates of change, the team turned to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project which combines simulations from over two dozen climate models from around the world.

The team calculated how fast temperatures changed between 1850 and 1930, a period when the amount of fossil fuel gases in the atmosphere was low. They compared these rates to temperatures reconstructed from tree ring records, corals and ice cores, for the past 2,000 years.

The shorter time period simulations were similar to the reconstructions over a longer time period, indicating robustness of the model used.

While there was little average global temperature increase in the early time period, the Earth's temperature fluctuated in the past due to natural variability.

Rise in North America and Europe

But rates of change over the earlier 40-year periods in North America and Europe rose and fell as much as 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade.

In the period between 1971 and 2020 this went up with the average rate of change over North America touching about 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade, beyond natural variability.

At the present time, most world regions are almost completely outside the natural range for rates of change.

Calculating for the coming 40 years, climate change picked up speed in all cases, even in scenarios with lower rates of future greenhouse gas emissions.

At high greenhouse gas emissions, increased rates of change were seen throughout the rest of the century.

I guess *another* scientist must be wrong, along with the other 90%+ that all agree that man caused climate change is real and a problem.

Thoughts?

[-:Undertaker:-]

Back under the Roman Empire, over a thousand years ago, people were able to grow grapes in the north of the then-Britannia Roman province. Since then, we haven't been able to and the temperature is believed to have cooled between Roman times and now. The Romans didn't drive SUVs.

The climate is changing and always will change, that big ball of fire that is like x1000 the size of the Earth is the elephant in the room as to why.

[FlyingJesus]

Literally no-one thinks that it's 100% caused by humans, just hugely accelerated by it. And your own point seems to suggest that the Romans not having SUVs helped the planet cool down until recently



ps we totally grow grapes in Britain

[Chippiewill]

Back under the Roman Empire, over a thousand years ago, people were able to grow grapes in the north of the then-Britannia Roman province. Since then, we haven't been able to and the temperature is believed to have cooled between Roman times and now. The Romans didn't drive SUVs.

The climate is changing and always will change, that big ball of fire that is like x1000 the size of the Earth is the elephant in the room as to why.

No ones denying the climate fluctuates naturally, just not this fast and not with such a high causal link to our own actions.

[-:Undertaker:-]

No ones denying the climate fluctuates naturally, just not this fast and not with such a high causal link to our own actions.

I see no extreme fluctuations in the temperature now.

Until and unless the sea rises by 7ft and we find ourselves having to build huge sea defences, it is all hypothetical.

[FlyingJesus]

"Temperatures fluctuated by 0.2 deg c in the last 1,000 years but went up to 0.4 deg per decade in the last 40 years." should prob read the thread then, and we do have sea defences

[-:Undertaker:-]

"Temperatures fluctuated by 0.2 deg c in the last 1,000 years but went up to 0.4 deg per decade in the last 40 years." should prob read the thread then, and we do have sea defences

If sea levels are going to rise due to AGW as you lot warn, then those defences need to be a lot higher... right?

An interesting comic you posted earlier too... you'd probably have posted that back in the 1920s too when science and the 'experts' advocated eugenics.

[FlyingJesus]

I don't oppose eugenics for health reasons, it's one of the reasons I'm so in support of stem cell research and DNA cloning/alteration research and stuff

And yeah the defences will need to get higher at some point, you keep saying yourself that we'll have to adapt. Also nice one avoiding the entire point of my post - you said you've seen no evidence of fluctuating temperatures despite there being evidence of it in this very thread... you are (as usual) completely ignoring the major points to focus on quibbles and things that haven't been said