Scientists has solved a controversial but important mystery about climate change, which reinforces climate models and confirms that the earth is warmer than in at least 12,000 years, and perhaps even the last 128,000 years, according to the most recent annual global temperature data.
This mystery is known as the ‘Holocene temperature mystery’, and it describes a debate about how the temperature changed during the Holocene, a period that describes the last 11,700 years of our planet’s history . While some previous proxy reconstructions indicate that the average Holocene temperature peaked between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago and that the planet has cooled since then, climate models suggest that global temperatures have actually risen over the past 12,000 years, with using factors such as rising greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
This ‘mystery’ has ‘raised doubts among skeptics about the effectiveness of current climate models in accurately predicting our future,’ co-author Samantha Bova, a fellow doctor of postdoctoral research at Rutgers University, told Space.com in an email. .
The new study leaves this uncertainty to rest, but shows that the current climate projections on the money are right.
The study “eliminates any doubt about the key role of carbon dioxide in global warming and confirms climate model simulations that show the average annual temperature warming, rather than cooling, during the Holocene period,” Bova said.
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The team specifically demonstrated that “late cooling of Holocene, as rebuilt by proxy, is a seasonal signal,” Bova told Space.com.
To do this, the team developed a new method that enabled them to use “seasonal temperatures to reach annual averages. Using our new method, we show that Holocene means that annual temperatures have risen gradually, “added Bova.
The scientists analyzed previously published data on sea surface temperature, which used information on the fossils of foraminifera – unicellular organisms that live on the surface of the ocean – and other biomarkers of marine algae. This has enabled them to reconstruct temperatures throughout history.
With these data, “we show that the post-industrial increase in world temperature has risen from the warmest average annual temperature recorded in the last 12,000 years,” Bova said, adding that it is contrary to recent research. “Earth’s global temperatures have thus reached unprecedented territory that has not been observed for at least the last 12,000 and perhaps the last 128,000 years.”
“As 2020 equals the warmest year on record based on the new NASA / NOAA data release, our results show that the average annual temperatures in 2020 were the warmest of the last 12,000 years and possibly the last 128,000 years,” he said. Bova closed. (NOAA is the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
By confirming the temperature records during this period, the team not only provided additional evidence for ‘the effectiveness of current climate models to accurately simulate the climate over the past 12,000 years,’ Bova said. The work also gives ‘confidence in their ability to predict the future’.
This work was published in the journal Nature on 27 January.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.