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Palaeoclimate

Kink in the thermometer

Nature volume 462, pages 295–296 (2009)Cite this article

Temperature estimates derived from isotopes in polar ice cores reveal much about Earth's past climate. According to the latest analysis, interglacial periods were rather warmer than previously thought.

For the past million years or so, the transition between glaciations and warm interglacials has been dominated by a cycle of about 100,000 years. The last warm period, the Eemian, occurred around 128,000 years ago, and from various proxy measurements it is widely accepted that temperatures then were higher than those during modern pre-industrial times. The Eemian therefore offers a window on the consequences of contemporary global warming. For instance, the warmer climate was associated with significant changes in the volume of the Greenland ice sheet, and as a result sea level could have been about 4–6 metres higher than it is today1.

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Figure 1: Temperature-isotope relationships.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David Noone is in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA. dcn@colorado.edu,

    David Noone

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Noone, D. Kink in the thermometer. Nature 462, 295–296 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/462295a

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