PAST CLIMATE CHANGE

The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. From glacial periods (or "ice ages") where ice covered significant portions of the Earth to interglacial periods where ice retreated to the poles or melted entirely - the climate has continuously changed.

Scientists have been able to piece together a picture of the Earth's climate dating back decades to millions of years ago by analyzing a number of surrogate, or "proxy⁶," measures of climate such as ice cores⁷, boreholes⁸, tree rings, glacier lengths, pollen remains, and ocean sediments, and by studying changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun.

This page contains information about the causes of climate change throughout the Earth's history, the rates at which the climate has changed, as well as information about climate change during the last 2,000 years.

Causes of Change

Known causes or “drivers” of past climate change include:

• Changes in the Earth's orbit: Changes in the shape of the Earth's orbit (or eccentricity⁹) as well as the Earth's tilt and precession¹⁰ affect the amount of sunlight received on the Earth's surface. These orbital processes -- which function in cycles of 100,000 (eccentricity), 41,000 (tilt), and 19,000 to 23,000 (precession) years -- are thought to be the most significant drivers of ice ages according to the theory of Mulitin Milankovitch¹¹, a Serbian mathematician (1879-1958). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Earth Observatory offers additional information about orbital variations and the Milankovitch Theory¹².

• Changes in the sun's intensity: Changes occurring within (or inside) the sun can affect the intensity of the sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface. The intensity of the sunlight can cause either warming (for stronger solar intensity) or cooling (for weaker solar intensity). According to NASA research¹³, reduced solar activity from the 1400s to the 1700s was likely a key factor in the “Little Ice Age” which resulted in a slight cooling of North America, Europe and probably other areas around the globe. (See additional discussion under The Last 2,000 Years.)

• Volcanic eruptions: Volcanoes can affect the climate because they can emit aerosols and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

  • Aerosol emissions: Volcanic aerosols tend to block sunlight and contribute to short term cooling. Aerosols do not produce long-term change because they leave the atmosphere not long after they are emitted. According to the United States Geological Survey¹⁴ (USGS), the eruption of the Tambora Volcano in Indonesia in 1815 lowered global temperatures by as much as 5ºF and historical accounts in New England describe 1815 as “the year without a summer.”

  • Carbon dioxide emissions: Volcanoes also emit carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, which has a warming effect. For about two-thirds of the last 400 million years, geologic evidence suggests CO2 levels and temperatures were considerably higher than present. One theory is that volcanic eruptions from rapid sea floor spreading elevated CO2 concentrations, enhancing the greenhouse effect and raising temperatures. However, the evidence for this theory is not conclusive and there are alternative explanations for historic CO2 levels (NRC, 2005). While volcanoes may have raised pre-historic CO2 levels and temperatures, according to the USGS Volcano Hazards Program¹⁵, human activities now emit 150 times as much CO2 as volcanoes (whose emissions are relatively modest compared to some earlier times).

These climate change “drivers” often trigger additional changes or “feedbacks” within the climate system that can amplify or dampen the climate's initial response to them (whether the response is warming or cooling). For example:

• Changes in greenhouse gas concentrations: The heating or cooling of the Earth's surface can cause changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. For example, when global temperatures become warmer, carbon dioxide is released from the oceans. When changes in the Earth's orbit trigger a warm (or interglacial) period, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide may amplify the warming by enhancing the greenhouse effect. When temperatures become cooler, CO2 enters the ocean and contributes to additional cooling. During at least the last 420,000 years, CO2 levels¹⁶ have tended to track the glacial cycles (IPCC, 2001). That is, during warm interglacial periods, CO2 levels have been high and during cool glacial periods, CO2 levels have been low (see Figure 1).

• Changes in ocean currents: The heating or cooling of the Earth's surface can cause changes in ocean currents. Because ocean currents play a significant role in distributing heat around the Earth, changes in these currents can bring about significant changes in climate from region to region.

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Rates of Change

Studies of the Earth's previous climate suggest periods of stability as well as periods of rapid change. Recent climate research suggests:

• Interglacial climates (such as the present) tend to be more stable than cooler, glacial climates. For example, the climate during the current and previous²⁰ interglacials (known as the Holocene and Eemian interglacials) has been more stable than the most recent glacial period (known as the Last Glacial Maximum). This glacial period was characterized by a long string of widespread, large and abrupt climate changes (NRC, 2002).

• Abrupt or rapid climate changes²¹ tend to frequently accompany transitions between glacial and interglacial periods (and vice versa). For example, a significant part of the Northern Hemisphere (particularly around Greenland) may have experienced warming rates as large as 16ºF in 50 years at the end of the Younger Dryas event 11,500 years ago as the planet was emerging from the last ice age (IPCC, 2001).

While abrupt climate changes have occurred throughout the Earth's history, human civilization arose during a period of relative climate stability.

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The Last 2,000 Years

During the last 2,000 years, the climate has been relatively stable. Scientists have identified two minor departures from this stability, known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly (also referred to as the Medieval Warm Period) and the Little Ice Age:

• The Medieval Climate Anomaly: Between roughly 900 and 1300 AD, evidence suggests Europe, Greenland and Asia experienced relative warmth. While historical accounts and other evidence document the warmth that occurred in some regions, the geographical extent, magnitude and timing of the warmth during this period is uncertain (NRC, 2006). The American West experienced very dry conditions around this time.

• The Little Ice Age: A wide variety of evidence supports the global existence of a "Little Ice Age" (this was not a true "ice age" since major ice sheets did not develop) between about 1500 and 1850 (NRC, 2006). Average temperatures were possibly up to 2ºF colder than today, but varied by region.

Together, these two periods define the upper and lower boundaries of the climate's recent natural variability and are a reflection of changes in climate drivers (the sun's variability and volcanic activity) and the climate's internal variability (referring to random changes in the circulation of the atmosphere and oceans). The issue of whether the temperature rise of the 20th century crossed over the warm limit of the boundary has been a controversial topic in the science community. The National Academy of Sciences recently completed a study to assess the efforts to reconstruct temperatures of the past one to two millennia (see Figure 2) and place the Earth's current warming in historical context (NRC, 2006).

According to the study (NRC, 2006):

• There is a high level of confidence that the global average temperature during the last few decades was warmer than any comparable period during the last 400 years.

• Present evidence suggests that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. However, uncertainties associated with this statement increase substantially backward in time.

• Very little confidence can be assigned to estimates of hemisphere average or global average temperature prior to A.D. 900 due to limited data coverage and challenges in analyzing older data.

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References

• IPCC, 2001: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis.  Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Houghton, J.T., Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell, and C.A. Johnson (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 881pp.

• National Research Council (NRC), 2002: Abrupt Climate Change, Inevitable Surprises. National Academy Press, Washington, DC. National Academy Press, Washington, DC

• National Research Council (NRC), 2005: Radiative Forcing of Climate Change. National Academy Press, Washington, DC. National Academy Press, Washington, DC

• National Research Council (NRC), 2006. Surface Temperature Reconstructions For the Last 2,000 Years. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.