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Palaeoclimate

The past is not the future

Nature Geoscience volume 4, pages 661–663 (2011)Cite this article

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During the last interglacial period, summer temperatures were warmer and the Greenland ice sheet smaller than today. Modelling suggests that the low ice-sheet volume was not simply a consequence of high ambient temperatures.

The last interglacial period, or Eemian, was characterized by warmer summer temperatures in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere1 than in the Holocene epoch. This was accompanied by a sea-level highstand at least four to six metres above present2. Because the higher ambient temperatures are in line with those predicted for the end of this century, the palaeoclimate conditions of the Eemian are often used as an analogue for future climate change. However, the cause of Eemian warmth was fundamentally different from that of anthropogenic climate change: unlike today, the concentration of greenhouse gases during the Eemian was essentially the same as in the preindustrial period3. Instead, the warmth was related to the configuration of the Earth's orbit, which resulted in more incoming solar radiation in the high northern latitudes during the summer than at present. Writing in Nature Geoscience, van de Berg and colleagues4 report that the direct effect of this insolation change on the surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet is of comparable importance to temperature changes, and thus casts doubt on the suitability of the Eemian as an analogue for future climate.

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Figure 1: Summer warming, past and future.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Andrey Ganopolski is at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Telegrafenberg A62, PO Box 60 12 03, D-14412, Potsdam, Germany,

    Andrey Ganopolski

  2. Alexander Robinson is at the Facultad de Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Planta 4º, Despacho 228.0, Madrid 28040, Spain,

    Alexander Robinson

Authors
  1. Andrey Ganopolski
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  2. Alexander Robinson
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Correspondence to Andrey Ganopolski.

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Ganopolski, A., Robinson, A. The past is not the future. Nature Geosci 4, 661–663 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1268

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