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Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-17, 20:40 authored by Ahmed, M, Anchukaitis, KJ, Asrat, A, Borgaonkar, HP, Braida, M, Buckley, BM, Buntgen, U, Chase, BM, Christie, DA, Cook, ER, Mark Curran, Diaz, HF, Esper, J, Fan, Z-X, Gaire, NP, Ge, Q, Gergis, J, Gonzalez-Rouco, JF, Goosse, H, Grab, SW, Graham, N, Graham, R, Grosjean, M, Hanhijarvi, ST, Kaufman, DS, Kiefer, T, Kimura, K, Korhola, AA, Krusic, PJ, Lara, A, Lezine, A-M, Ljungqvist, FC, Lorrey, AM, Luterbacher, J, Masson-Delmotte, V, McCarroll, D, McConnell, JR, McKay, NP, Morales, MS, Andrew MoyAndrew Moy, Mulvaney, R, Mundo, IA, Nakatsuka, T, Nash, DJ, Neukom, R, Nicholson, SE, Oerter, H, Palmer, JG, Phipps, SJ, Prieto, MR, Rivera, A, Sano, M, Severi, M, Shanahan, TM, Shao, X, Shi, F, Sigl, M, Smerdon, JE, Solomina, ON, Steig, EJ, Stenni, B, Thamban, M, Trouet, V, Turney, CSM, Umer, M, Tasman van OmmenTasman van Ommen, Verschuren, D, Viau, AE, Villalba, R, Vinther, BM, Von Gunten, L, Wagner, S, Wahl, ER, Wanner, H, Werner, JP, White, JWC, Yasue, K, Zorita, EPast global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between ad 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century. The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions. Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period ad 1971-2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.
History
Publication title
Nature GeoscienceVolume
6Issue
5Pagination
339-346ISSN
1752-0894Department/School
Institute for Marine and Antarctic StudiesPublisher
Nature Publishing GroupPlace of publication
United KingdomRights statement
Copyright 2013 Macmillan PublishersRepository Status
- Restricted