Report: Last 3 Decades of 20th Century Hotter Than Anytime in 1,400 Years Lauren McCauley - Common Dreams
go to original April 24, 2013

Global Warming - A video by NASA (vengencefrom1979)

A groundbreaking new report published Sunday by Nature Geoscience found that average worldwide temperatures over the past thirty years were "higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years."

A British photographer marks a 110 degree day, "the hottest of my life."(Photo: David Reeves/ Flickr) Researchers behind the report, "Continental-Scale Temperature Variability During the Past Two Millennia," reconstructed past temperatures for continental regions over the past one to two millennia. Over that time, the analysis shows a long term cooling trend that lasted through to the middle of last century. Then, as the climate advocacy group Tck Tck Tck writes, the cooling "halted with a sharp reversal" in the late nineteenth century, "correlat[ing] directly with an increase in carbon emissions from human activity."

"Prior to the 20th century natural drivers were dominant, such as change in solar output and volcanic eruption, however what happened during the 20th century is that human influences and predominantly greenhouse gases become dominant," says co-author and paleoclimatologist Dr Steven Phipps of the University of New South Wales.

The reversal culminates during the period between 1971-2000 during which the researchers found the "average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years."

The report also refutes the popular belief that previous warming and cooling trends spanned the globe, finding instead that they only occurred regionally.

Read the rest at Common Dreams

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