The Daily Parker

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Yes, the climate has changed before...just not like this

As our planet warms to global average temperatures not seen in over 125,000 years, a pair of long-range studies has concluded the unique way or climate is changing right now, as opposed to the rest of history:

“The familiar maxim that the climate is always changing is certainly true,” Scott St. George, a physical geographer at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, said in a written commentary about the studies. “But even when we push our perspective to the earliest days of the Roman Empire, we cannot discern any event that is remotely equivalent — either in degree or extent — to the warming over the last few decades.”

One of the studies, published in the journal Nature, shows that the Little Ice Age and other natural fluctuations affected only limited regions of the planet at a time, making modern warming the first and only planetwide warm period in the past two millennia. The other study, published in Nature Geoscience, shows that the rate of modern warming has far outpaced changes that occurred before the rise of the industrial era.

For the Nature Geoscience study, the researchers charted global temperature averages over time, and then compared the data to a set of climate simulations to figure out what might have driven the changes. Neukom and his colleagues found that the fastest warming in the last two millennia occurred during the second half of the 20th century.

The researchers also found that the main cause of temperature fluctuations changed over time. Prior to 1850, fluctuations were mainly linked to volcanic eruptions, which cooled the planet by spewing sun-blocking ash into the stratosphere; after 1850, greenhouse gas emissions took the wheel.

As if to underscore that, today London saw temperatures over 37°C while France and other parts of Europe set new all-time heat records, with a reading of 42.6°C in Paris today.

Comments (3) -

  • David Harper

    7/26/2019 8:33:40 AM +00:00 |

    Here in the UK, yesterday's highest temperature was in Cambridge, which hit 38.1°C, which is less than half a degree below the record high temperature for the UK, 38.5°C, which was recorded in Faversham, Kent, in 2003.

  • David Harper

    7/26/2019 7:58:37 PM +00:00 |

    And now it's looking like Cambridge actually reached 38.7°C yesterday, at the university's botanic gardens:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49132575

    It's unconfirmed as yet, but if true, Cambridge just set a new record high temperature for the UK.

  • The Daily Parker

    7/26/2019 8:32:08 PM +00:00 |

    I can imagine how happy that must make you.

Comments are closed