A University of Arizona-led effort to reconstruct Earth's climate since the last ice age, about 24,000 years ago, highlights the main drivers of climate change and how far out of bounds human activity has pushed the climate system.
A University of Arizona-led effort to reconstruct Earth's climate since the last ice age, about 24,000 years ago, highlights the main drivers of climate change and how far out of bounds human activity has pushed the climate system.
The study, published Wednesday in Nature, has three main findings:
It verifies that the main drivers of climate change since the last ice age are rising greenhouse gas concentrations and the retreat of the ice sheets.
It suggests a general warming trend over the last 10,000 years, settling a decade-long debate the paleoclimatology community about whether this period trended warmer or cooler.
The magnitude and rate warming over the last 150 years far surpasses the magnitude and rate of changes over the last 24,000 years.
"This reconstruction suggests that current temperatures are unprecedented in 24,000 years, and also suggests that the speed of human-caused global warming is faster than anything we've seen in that same time," said Jessica Tierney, a UArizona geosciences associate professor and co-author of the study.
Read more at: University of Arizona
