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Monday, March 18, 2013

"A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years," by S. A. Marcott et al., Science, 339 (2013); doi: 10.1126/science.1228026

ScienceVol. 339, No. 6124, pp. 1198-1201 
DOI: 10.1126/science.1228026
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A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years

  1. Alan C. Mix1
+Author Affiliations
  1. 1College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
  2. 2Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
  1. *Correspondence e-mail: marcotts@science.oregonstate.edu
Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1,500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5,000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7 °C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5,000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2 °C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios.

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