An evaluation of the Earth's temperature over the past 2,000 years has been published in a report that came out in the journal of Nature Geoscience. It highlighted the astonishing rate of increase in the temperature of the world, characterized by the significant warming of the planet.
The report also shows a clearer picture of the variations in temperature decade after decade, including the factors that drove the fluctuations in the rate before the Industrial Revolution was set in place. Contrary to popular belief that the changes in the pre-industrial temperature were due to the varying nature of the sun, the research found that volcanoes were largely responsible for it too. However, none of these could compare to the man-made warming of the Earth due to human activities and demands.
In the absence of thermometers, satellites, and even ocean buoys to help scientists record temperature, other methods have been used to reconstruct the climate thousands of years ago. Luckily, nature has its own way of recording things and make it available for people's consumption. What was left to do was to learn how to read the signs that nature presents. Tree rings, corals, lake sediments as well as ice cores are just a few of the helpful sources of "proxy" data. When brought together, scientists would be able to determine what the climate was hundreds of years before now and compare it to what the Earth is experiencing at this time.
With the unique data in hand, the team was able to reconstruct the past temperature of the Earth on a global scale. Scientists have always been skeptical of the results of their studies, and they only become confident about it when they have applied different methods of analysis and yield the same results. In the paper recently published, the researchers used seven different methods to do the temperature reconstruction. They were astounded to find that the methods all gave remarkably similar results with noticeable multidecadal fluctuations. The results seemed too precise considering the variety of measurements used.
The study has produced the clearest picture of how the world's temperature changed through time, even before the Industrial Revolution has been in place. The climate models performed well in comparison to the data that was collected. The natural ups and downs in temperatures from year to year and decade to decade.
An understanding of the past temperature variations of the Earth continues and unless people do something to battle climate change, people can only expect the temperatures to become worse. It is really up to the population whether to continue destroying the planet or start doing something to improve the conditions of the planet.
