TREE RINGS STUDIES CONFIRM GLOBAL COOLING
The prestigious Nature Journal recently published an important climate change study named Orbital Forcing Of Tree-Ring Data that proves through analysis of over 2000 years of tree ring evidence that current climate models substantially underestimated Northern Europe temperatures levels for Roman and Medieval Periods. The fact that temperatures have been trending down for the last two centuries undermines theories the theory that anthropogenic (man-made) global-warming is caused by a rise in CO2 associated with industrial burning of coal and other fossil fuels.
Researchers from Germany, Finland, Scotland, and Switzerland examined tree-ring density profiles in trees from Finnish Lapland. In this extremely cold environment, trees often collapse into one of the numerous lakes, where they remain well preserved for thousands of years. The international team of researchers was able to conduct measurements from as early as 138 BC on the density of Scandinavian sub-fossil pine
trees, which correlates very closely with annual summer temperature patters.
The data allowed analysts to reconstruct the high-resolution graph above to track the previously undetermined temperature fluctuation patterns for what turned out to be much warmer Roman and Medieval periods. The study also quantified the depths of the cold phases that occurred during Western Europe’s “Little Ice Age”, which was associated with a general cooling trend between the years 1150 and 1460 and a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850. As reported by lead researcher Jan Esper:
“We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low” … “Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today’s climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods.”
Paleoclimatology scientists have formerly relied upon indirect evidence of climate variability, such as ice cores and ocean sediments to attempt to reconstruct ancient European climates. But the new tree growth ring data is much more precise. The new findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C (0.54°F) per millennia (1000 year period). The research team determined that the temperature trend was “due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.
“This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant,” says Esper. “However, it is also not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C. Our results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few millennia
The prestigious Nature Journal recently published an important climate change study named Orbital Forcing Of Tree-Ring Data that proves through analysis of over 2000 years of tree ring evidence that current climate models substantially underestimated Northern Europe temperatures levels for Roman and Medieval Periods. The fact that temperatures have been trending down for the last two centuries undermines theories the theory that anthropogenic (man-made) global-warming is caused by a rise in CO2 associated with industrial burning of coal and other fossil fuels.
Researchers from Germany, Finland, Scotland, and Switzerland examined tree-ring density profiles in trees from Finnish Lapland. In this extremely cold environment, trees often collapse into one of the numerous lakes, where they remain well preserved for thousands of years. The international team of researchers was able to conduct measurements from as early as 138 BC on the density of Scandinavian sub-fossil pine
trees, which correlates very closely with annual summer temperature patters.
The data allowed analysts to reconstruct the high-resolution graph above to track the previously undetermined temperature fluctuation patterns for what turned out to be much warmer Roman and Medieval periods. The study also quantified the depths of the cold phases that occurred during Western Europe’s “Little Ice Age”, which was associated with a general cooling trend between the years 1150 and 1460 and a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850. As reported by lead researcher Jan Esper:
“We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low” … “Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today’s climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods.”
Paleoclimatology scientists have formerly relied upon indirect evidence of climate variability, such as ice cores and ocean sediments to attempt to reconstruct ancient European climates. But the new tree growth ring data is much more precise. The new findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C (0.54°F) per millennia (1000 year period). The research team determined that the temperature trend was “due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.
“This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant,” says Esper. “However, it is also not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C. Our results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few millennia
Chriss W. Street
Contact: chriss.street@gmail.com
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