Evidence from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments shows that arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years. The arctic cooled slowly over the past 2,000 years as Earth’s orbit changed, but in the past 100 years greenhouse gas emissions have fuelled fast temperature rises.
23 sites sampled were good enough to provide a decade-by-decade picture of temperatures across the region and show that how much energy we’re getting from the Sun is no longer the most important thing governing the temperature of the Arctic. The result is a “hockey stick”-like curve in which the last decade – 1998-2008 – stands out as the warmest in the entire series.
Comments