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Rapid warming linked to leap in tropical ocean seasonality

Seasonal variation in tropical sea surface temperatures doubled during an abrupt warming event 11,700 years ago. This shows that seasonal changes must be considered when inferring past climatic events, and predicting those to come.
  1. Alyssa R. Atwood

    1. Alyssa R. Atwood is in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA.

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Since the peak of the last glacial state 21,000 years ago, Earth’s climate system has warmed to the present interglacial state, known as the Holocene. But this trend was not smooth — temperatures jumped by up to 10° C over a period of years to decades during two warming events around 14,700 and 11,700 years ago1–3. No modern analogue exists for these abrupt climate events. This makes such events crucial for grasping the erratic way in which the climate system can respond to external changes, with relevance to understanding current anthropogenic warming trends. Although these deglacial changes are generally well characterized on decadal and longer timescales, little is known about them on shorter timescales. Writing in Nature, Wörmer et al.4 report that data on these shorter timescales reveal that surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean showed a large increase in seasonal variation at the start of the Holocene.

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Nature 612, 36-38 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03833-y

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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