NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Plateau Remote, Antarctica 2,000 Year Ice Core Oxygen Isotope Data

Past 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.

历史上的全球气候变化呈现出显著的区域差异性特征。为阐明其时空格局，我们针对过去1至2千年间的7个大陆尺度区域开展了气温序列重建工作。在几乎所有区域的气温重建序列中，最具一致性的特征为长期降温趋势，该趋势于19世纪末期终结。在年代际至百年尺度上，气温变率表现出显著不同的区域格局，且各半球内部的相似性高于半球间的相似性。不存在能够定义全球性中世纪暖期（Medieval Warm Period）或小冰期（Little Ice Age）的全球同步年代际冷暖时段，但所有重建序列均显示，公元1580年至1880年期间整体处于冷态，部分区域在18世纪曾穿插暖期十年段。相较于北美或南半球区域，北极、欧洲与亚洲地区向冷态的转型发生得更早。近期增温逆转了长期降温趋势；在公元1971年至2000年期间，区域加权平均重建气温较近1400年来的任何其他时段均更高。