Publication details
The IPCC's reductive Common Era temperature history
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Communications Earth and Environment |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01371-1 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01371-1 |
| Keywords | NORTHERN-HEMISPHERE TEMPERATURES; LAST MILLENNIUM; LARGE-SCALE; TREE-RINGS; SURFACE-TEMPERATURE; SUMMER TEMPERATURES; CLIMATE; RECONSTRUCTION; RESOLUTION; VARIABILITY |
| Description | Common Era temperature variability has been a prominent component in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports over the last several decades and was twice featured in their Summary for Policymakers. A single reconstruction of mean Northern Hemisphere temperature variability was first highlighted in the 2001 Summary for Policymakers, despite other estimates that existed at the time. Subsequent reports assessed many large-scale temperature reconstructions, but the entirety of Common Era temperature history in the most recent Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was restricted to a single estimate of mean annual global temperatures. We argue that this focus on a single reconstruction is an insufficient summary of our understanding of temperature variability over the Common Era. We provide a complementary perspective by offering an alternative assessment of the state of our understanding in high-resolution paleoclimatology for the Common Era and call for future reports to present a more accurate and comprehensive assessment of our knowledge about this important period of human and climate history. |