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Palaeoclimate puzzle explained by seasonal variation

Scientists have long been baffled by the mismatch of climate simulations of the past 12,000 years with temperature reconstructions from geological records. It now emerges that seasonal biases in the records explain the disparity.
  1. Jennifer Hertzberg

    1. Jennifer Hertzberg is in the International Ocean Discovery Program, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77845, USA.

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Understanding past climate change is crucial for putting modern global warming in context. Reconstructions of climate during the Holocene — the current interglacial epoch, which began 11,700 years ago — based on geological evidence suggest that a peak in global mean annual temperatures between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago was followed by a cooling trend, which then reversed in the post-industrial era1,2. However, computational simulations of Holocene climate reveal only a long-term warming trend3. Writing in Nature, Bova et al.4 report an analysis that effectively brings Holocene climate reconstructions in line with computational simulations. This result has important implications for our understanding of the drivers of climate change during the Holocene and for the context of post-industrial warming.

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Nature 589, 521-522 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00115-x

References

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