PICE Talk by Samantha Bova

(Rutgers University)

Title: An absence of early interglacial warmth in global mean annual temperature reconstructions  

Abstract: Proxy reconstructions of global annual surface temperature indicate peak temperatures in the first half of the last and current interglacial periods that arguably exceed modern warmth. However, early interglacial warmth is not simulated in the annual mean by state-of-the-art climate models. In this talk, I will demonstrate that early interglacial warmth, as recorded by proxies, is a seasonal feature driven by changes in incoming northern hemisphere summer solar radiation, and that peak mean annual global temperature actually occurs thousands of years later. This result confirms climate model simulations that show global mean annual temperature warming, rather than cooling, across past interglacial periods, and thus resolves the long-standing interglacial temperature conundrum. The new results further demonstrate that Earth’s global temperatures have reached uncharted territory that has not been observed over the past 12,000 and perhaps 128,000 years. 

For more information, please use the following link to Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03155-x

Please join via the zoom link: https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/64402633878