A new set of long-term climate records based on cave stalagmites collected from tropical Borneo shows that the western tropical Pacific responded very differently than other regions of the globe to abrupt climate change events. The 100,000-year climate record adds to data on past climate events, and may help scientists assess models designed to predict how the Earth's climate will respond in the future.
How these changes occurred without SUVs I'll never understand.
Among the findings were some surprises that show just how complicated the Earth's climate system can be.
Huh, you don't say.
The researchers were also surprised to discover a very large and abrupt signal in their stalagmite climate records precisely when super-volcano Toba erupted nearby, roughly 74,000 years ago.
If volcanic activity effects are a surprise, then these people shouldn't be studying climate. They should be on the couch, watching Oprah and eating bonbons.
Climate scientists are interested in learning more about abrupt climate changes because they indicate that the climate system may have "tipping points." So far, the climate system has responded to rising carbon dioxide levels at a fairly steady rate, but many scientists worry about possible nonlinear effects.
Is there any evidence of these nonlinear effects?
For Carolin, studying the half-meter-long stalagmites brought an awareness that the Earth has not always been as we know it today.
"You have to be impressed with the scope of what you are studying, and recognize that the state our climate is in today is incredibly different from Earth's climate during the last Ice Age," she said.
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1 comment:
Actually, this sort of thing happens all the time.
Roughly coincident with the announcement of the climate data from those stalagmites was news of a weather phenomenon that's been given the somewhat dramatic name of "dark lightning".
Turns out some lightning strokes produce gamma rays and they're the most energetic photons produced by any terrestrial process.
Do these bursts of energetic radiation have an effect on the climate? Who knows? We didn't even know of the existence of them before 1991 and it was only recently that those emissions have been measured with any degree of precision.
Not that this sort of thing will discomfort a true greenie-weenie. As far as they're concerned anything that supports the urgency of the morally elevated imposing their views on the less-evolved is true.
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