Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability

Thomas J. Crowley () and William T. Hyde
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Thomas J. Crowley: School of Geosciences, The University of Edinburgh
William T. Hyde: The University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A7, Canada

Nature, 2008, vol. 456, issue 7219, 226-230

Abstract: Global climate: just a phase we're passing through The past three million years have seen dramatic climate fluctuation, with conditions swinging between cold glacial and warm interglacial extremes. These changes are usually interpreted as nonlinear responses of the climate system to subtle cyclical changes in Earth's orbit or gradual reduction in the Earth's background CO2 level. Thomas Crowley and William Hyde offer an alternative view, proposing that these increasingly pronounced fluctuations, though driven by orbital variations, are indicative of transient behaviour of a system approaching a branching point. That is, a point at which the system will undergo a transition to a new stable climate state of permanent midlatitude Northern Hemisphere glaciation. Modelling results predict that such a transition could occur in the geologically near future (10,000–100,000 years), but only in the unlikely event that background atmospheric CO2 falls to levels lower than at during the past 10,000 years.

Date: 2008
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07365

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