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Climate
Science: Investigating Climatic and Environmental Processes Abrupt climate change, on the other hand, has very different causes and effects. While climate is often remarkably steady with expected norms of daily and seasonal fluctuations, paleoclimate research has shown that climate can in fact change very quickly, in a matter of seasons and years rather than centuries or millennia as was previously thought.
One example of abrupt climate change is an event that happened some 11,600 years ago at the termination of the Younger Dryas cold event, which was the last blast of cold climate at the end of the last Ice Age some. Ice
core records from Greenland show in less than a decade there was a sudden
warming of around 15 degrees Celsius (27oF) of the annual mean
temperature. At the same time a doubling of annual precipitation occurred.
Researcher Richard Alley suggests that not only does the climate system
have dials that slowly alter climate patterns, there are also switches
that can suddenly shift climate in dramatic ways. (Source:
Alley, et al. 1993. Graphic above from
CLIVAR.) This abrupt event can be found in paleo records from many
parts of the world, although not necessarily to such an extreme degree.
While the exact
causes of abrupt climate changes have yet to be clearly established, one
area of research that is receiving a great deal of attention the Thermohaline
Circulation system and what role it may play on abrupt climate shifts.
Abrupt changes in climate can occur at many time scales, and while usually they are abrupt warming events, sudden cooling can occur as well. Recent studies such as the National Academy of Science's Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises note that it is not a matter if such events will occur in the future but when. For
more on abrupt climate change during the last Ice Age, see Climate
History 100,000, and in the Holocene,
see
Climate Science 10,000. Further back in Earth's history there have
also been cataclysmic events that have triggered severe climatic and environmental
changes that triggered mass extinctions of species. See Climate
Science Beyond for an overview. |
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/abrupt.html Downloaded Tuesday, 16-Sep-2008 02:12:55 EDT Last Updated Friday, 07-Oct-2005 12:25:59 EDT by paleo@noaa.gov Please see the Paleoclimatology Contact Page or the NCDC Contact Page if you have questions or comments. |