While subtropical regions experience a single rainy season and major seasonal dynamics, equatorial wetlands may be less seasonal or exhibit two phases of rainy and dry seasons every year. On both coastlines the diversity peaks at 10 to 30N. Climate warmed They conclude one paragraph with: As Fig. [5] Systematic observations of sunspots started by amateur astronomer Heinrich Schwabe in the early 19th century, starting a discussion of the Sun's influence on Earth's climate. That tends to suggest it presents a badly failed hypothesis. 2 in Ref. Different ice sheet, different mechanism, different timing. They argue against a straw man: that mainstream climate science thinks that CO2 is supposed to force the glacial/interglacial cycles. Over the next five billion years, the Sun's ultimate death as it becomes a red giant and then a white dwarf will have large effects on climate, with the red giant phase possibly ending any life on Earth that survives until that time. Clearly, consensus is elusive concerning the relative importance of area in affecting species richness compared to other mechanisms. CO2 is one feedback. If these guys think low CO2 leads to higher Earth temperature, it seems they should have to demonstrate that. the Gerhard and Wort paper Ellsi and Palmer cite, a later unpublished work co-authored by Ellis. This branch of science studying this called dendroclimatology. Dyke, Arthur S. "An outline of North American deglaciation with emphasis on central and northern Canada. Previous interglacials such as the Eemian phase created temperatures higher than today, higher sea levels, and some partial melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet. nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, or methane). [128], Hemispheres. [113] In the past, the Earth's oceans have been almost entirely covered by sea ice on a number of occasions, when the Earth was in a so-called Snowball Earth state,[114] and completely ice-free in periods of warm climate. Three latitude bands that respectively cover 30, 40 and 30 percent of the global surface area show mutually distinct temperature growth patterns in recent decades. Note that we have two radical inconsistencies in units here: the CO2 radiative forcing is per square metre (so we need to account for the area of the earth to get total watts), and we have the per decade obfuscation. THE ESCALATOR [131], Upper regions of the atmosphere have been cooling contemporaneously with a warming in the lower atmosphere, confirming the action of the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion. "The Paleoproterozoic snowball Earth: A climate disaster triggered by the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis", "Mid-Pleistocene transition in glacial cycles explained by declining CO2 and regolith removal | Science Advances", "Non-Marine Records: Correlations with the Marine Sequence", "Chapter 22: The Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs", "Quaternary Glaciations of Northern Europe", "A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic 18O records", German Stratigraphic Commission: Stratigraphische Tabelle von Deutschland 2016, Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, Global chronostratigraphical correlation table for the last 2.7 million years, v. 2011, Kasse (1993), Periglacial environments and climate development during Early Pleistocene Tiglian stage (Beerse Glacial) in northern Belgium, Geologie en Mijnbouw 72, 107-123, Kluwer. So, like the flying bee example, Ellis and Palmer choose to do a unit conversion and calculation that favours the conclusion they want to support, without really justifying the logic. Latitudinal gradients suggest that arctic plant diversity is sensitive to climate (Callaghan etal., 2005). If Ellis and Palmer had realized this, they could have cut their CO. In North America, potential evapotranspiration on the coastal plains of the Gulf of Mexico exceeds 1500 mm. [14] Half of the 2021 Nobel prize on physics was awarded for this work to Klaus Hasselmann jointly with Syukuro Manabe for related work on climate modelling. [126], Land-ocean. Because different components of the Earth system change at different rates and are relevant at different timescales, Earth system history is a diverse and complex science. Figure 4. However, the absence of plant cover to absorb atmospheric CO2 emitted by volcanoes meant that the greenhouse gas could accumulate in the atmosphere. The latitudinal gradient in which richness peaks in the tropics may be a consequence of the larger landmass of the tropics compared to other geographic zones. [63] Correlation between sunspots and climate and tenuous at best. Environmental and Energy Study Institute - Climate Change, climate change - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), climate change - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). It seems to me that for most vegetative areas, a CO2 above 200ppm precludes it as a limiting factor in vegetative growth. 2004[23] found a climate sensitivity for the rest of the Phanerozoic which was calculated to be similar to today's modern range of values. In addition to the general meaning in which climate change may refer to any time in Earth's history, the term is commonly used to describe the climate change that is now underway. The oceanic aspects of climate variability can generate variability on centennial timescales due to the ocean having hundreds of times more mass than in the atmosphere, and thus very high thermal inertia. Furthermore, productivity gradients in the deep sea are the result of gradients in the food flux to the seafloor, which vary according to a number of processes. Older wood not connected to a contemporary record can be dated generally with radiocarbon techniques. Formal definition and dating of the GSSP (Global Stratotype Section and Point) for the base of the Holocene using the Greenland NGRIP ice core, and selected auxiliary records. Nonetheless, the positions, sizes, and configurations of the earth's continents will affect the proportion of land or water in tropical versus extratropical regions, and this has varied over geological time as a consequence of plate tectonics. Modified from Rohde K (1992) Latitudinal gradients in species diversity: the search for the primary cause. Latitudinal gradients in species diversity are among the strongest and most general patterns in ecology [60,61]. On timescales of millions of years, the uplift of mountain ranges and subsequent weathering processes of rocks and soils and the subduction of tectonic plates, are an important part of the carbon cycle. In a very real sense, climate variation is a redundant expressionclimate is always varying. This created a warming that later melted the ice and brought Earth's temperature back up. Rex and colleagues demonstrated that species richness for these taxa falls from the equator northward into the Norwegian Sea. For example, the megafaunal extinctions of the late Pleistocene were driven by, together with human impacts, climate forcing (see Fig. more vegetation, not less. Older sediments are also more prone to corruption by diagenesis. Doesn't this failure of their prediction kill their idea dead, all other things being equal? We refer to ice ages as periods where significant land-based ice exists, and we refer to glacial and interglacial cycles within an ice age to describe periods with more or less ice. For instance, climate influences the distribution of vegetation on Earths surface (e.g., deserts exist in arid regions, forests in humid regions), but vegetation in turn influences climate by reflecting radiant energy back into the atmosphere, transferring water (and latent heat) from soil to the atmosphere, and influencing the horizontal movement of air across the land surface. Combined with techniques to date the proxies, the paleoclimate records are used to determine the past states of Earth's atmosphere. If these guys think low CO2 leads to higher Earth temperature, it seems they should have to demonstrate that. This can affect both global and local patterns of climate and atmosphere-ocean circulation. What Ellis and Palmer have done is like me claiming that I can walk far faster than a 200km/h Porsche, because I can easily walk at a speed of 9000 furlongs per fortnight. The contribution of a single location is directly proportional to the area it covers - as a fraction of the total area of the planet. He illustrates the point with Eurasian freshwater fishes, and shows that much smaller tropical regions have much greater species richness than do larger cold-temperate regions. Glaciers need a source of moisture, to provide precipitation inputs. The third ice age, and possibly most severe, is estimated to have occurred from 720 to 635Ma (million years) ago,[3] in the Neoproterozoic Era, and it has been suggested that it produced a second[4] "Snowball Earth", i.e. Examples of latitudinal diversity gradients from regions outside of North America are dominated by non-mammalian taxa, but the taxonomic and geographic consistency of latitudinal diversity gradients [61], suggests that the distribution of most of the world's mammal species will contribute to a pattern of more species in warmer regions. They are smaller than 200 mm. Pakistans End of Days 2022 monsoon season, 2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40, No, a cherry-picked analysis doesnt demonstrate that were not in a climate crisis, Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40 2022, From the eMail bag: A Review of a paper by Ellis and Palmer. Often, they include major shifts in climate. Within ice ages, there exist periods of more severe glacial conditions and more temperate conditions, referred to as glacial periods and interglacial periods, respectively. [19], In 2020 scientists published a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate during the past 66 million years and identified four climate states, separated by transitions that include changing greenhouse gas levels and polar ice sheets volumes. "the paper[argues] that low CO2 leads to low vegetation, which leads to increased dust" How does this comport with general knowledge? It seems to me the natural cause of climate change (on the order of decades) is apparent do not look to the sun. It still focuses on albedo and high-latitude insolation. Evolution 14: 6481. The 18O/16O ratio in calcite and ice core samples used to deduce ocean temperature in the distant past is an example of a temperature proxy method. Glaciers will have an accumulation zone, where precipitation exceeds melt, and an ablation zone, where melt exceeds precipitation. By using that method, some areas have tree-ring records dating back a few thousand years. Refs [122,123]). This switch is usually explained by the dust during the earlier 40k phase being diminished as the bare plantless lands close-by glaciated areas were being scoured clean of any dust-generating soils by prior glaciations, scoured back to the bedrock. But how much does a bee weight? Climate variability can also result from external forcing, when events outside of the climate system's components nonetheless produce changes within the system. They show no understanding of the carbon cycle, with its various geological and biosphere processes (and how they change over time). [11] From a climate perspective, the weather can be considered random. In a larger timeframe, the Earth is emerging from the latest ice age, cooling from the Holocene climatic optimum and warming from the "Little Ice Age", which means that climate has been constantly changing over the last 15,000 years or so. Similar to biogeographic patterns, paleontological studies demonstrate that climate has pronounced effects on mammal communities [24,29,112]. Ice flow rates will be changing during that period, as accumulation zones shift. Two features of the earth's geometry predispose the sizes of tropical regions to be greater than those of their higher latitude counterparts. So, like the flying bee example, Ellis and Palmer choose to do a unit conversion and calculation that favours the conclusion they want to support, without really justifying the logic. One criticism of Ellis & Palmer (2016) that can be hurled with some confidence is that it has not exactly set the literature alight since it was published six long years ago. Interestingly, in the caption to their figure 1, they use the phrase CO2 concentration follows global temperatures very closely, giving the illusion of CO2 being the primary causal feedback factor. [Emphasis mine] That illusion is supported by detailed climate and glacier dynamics models and extensive analysis in the scientific literature. They first appeared with a dominant frequency of 41,000 years, but after the Mid-Pleistocene Transition that changed to high-amplitude cycles, with an average period of 100,000 years. "low CO2 leads to low vegetation increased dust reduce[d] ice sheet albedo end of a glacial period[= higher temperature]." There are also key thresholds which when exceeded can produce rapid or irreversible change. g1. For other types of natural climatic change, we cannot predict when it happens; the change is called random or stochastic. Solar activity may have contributed to part of the modern warming that peaked in the 1930s. Willig, S.J. "on all spatial and temporal scales beyond that of individual weather events." First, the earth is essentially a sphere. Corrections? Holocene climate has been relatively stable. They integrated data of various sources. In section 4, they expand on the dust albedo factors. Molecules of free oxygen did not start to accumulate in the atmosphere until the rate of production of oxygen began to exceed the availability of reducing materials. Walker, M., Johnsen, S., Rasmussen, S. O., Popp, T., Steffensen, J.-P., Gibbard, P., Hoek, W., Lowe, J., Andrews, J., Bjo rck, S., Cwynar, L. C., Hughen, K., Kershaw, P., Kromer, B., Litt, T., Lowe, D. J., Nakagawa, T., Newnham, R., and Schwander, J. Paleoclimatology (British spelling, palaeoclimatology) is the study of climates for which direct measurements were not taken. Moreover, considerable controversy surrounds the mechanisms that affect latitudinal patterns in richness, with ecological, evolutionary, historical, and stochastic processes (Table 1) championed as the cause(s) of observed gradients (Rohde, 1992). [95] Glaciers leave behind moraines that contain a wealth of materialincluding organic matter, quartz, and potassium that may be datedrecording the periods in which a glacier advanced and retreated. They use CO2 values of 150 for alpine treeline (2000m altitude), and 115 for tropical treeline (4000m altitude). but you need to carefully read the table to notice that they are using CO2 values in bar, not ppm. Analysis of ice in cores drilled from an ice sheet such as the Antarctic ice sheet, can be used to show a link between temperature and global sea level variations. Climate change is now used as both a technical description of the process, as well as a noun used to describe the problem. It has also been suggested that the end of that second cold period[4] was responsible for the subsequent Cambrian explosion, a time of rapid diversification of multi-cellular life during the Cambrian Period. In England, Wales, Ireland and Britain's American colonies, there were two calendar changes, both in 1752. Historically, research has focused on gradients of species richness (i.e., the number of species in an assemblage) because that was the only information available to effectively evaluate patterns of biodiversity at broad spatial extents (Fig. The pursuit of this understanding has led to development of Earth system history, an interdisciplinary science that includes not only the contributions of Earth system scientists but also paleontologists (who study the life of past geologic periods), paleoclimatologists (who study past climates), paleoecologists (who study past environments and ecosystems), paleoceanographers (who study the history of the oceans), and other scientists concerned with Earth history. Extensive research has established robust ingroup favorability biases across a variety of ingroupoutgroup category distinctions, including those based on age, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and religious affiliation (13, 14).Outgroup favorability bias, on the other hand, has been examined much less in the intergroup evaluation literature, perhaps because it is relatively Table 1. The Rapp et al unpublished paper that MA Rodger refers to is an interesting side note. One of the factors working against the grand assertion of Ellis & Palmer (2016), that CO2 leads to reduced plant-growth and thus more dust & lower albedo; one factor is the switch of ice-age period from 40k to 100k. A recent example of tectonic control on ocean circulation is the formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 5 million years ago, which shut off direct mixing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. greater absorption during their Great Summer, compared to a Great Winter. In the time since the Industrial Revolution, the climate has increasingly been affected by human activities that are causing global warming and climate change.[1]. For example, a tripartite division (torrid, temperate, and polar) reveals that the tropics ranks second in area to north temperate regions at the global scale, with considerable variation in the proportional area represented by the tropics among continents (approximately 38, 12, 80, 41, and 0% of America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, respectively). Studies of Earth system history also specify the full array of states the system has experienced in the past and those the system is capable of experiencing in the future. In discussing the common approach to albedo feedback amounts, and comparing it to the CO2 feedback, they state: The strength of the albedo feedback was calculated as being in the same range, or about 3 W/m2 over the full interglacial cycle (Hansen et al., 2012, Fig. lithospheric plates refer to the blocks of the landmass. An example of fast change is the atmospheric cooling after a volcanic eruption, when volcanic ash reflects sunlight. (Reprinted by permission from Nature 365, 636639 (1993) Macmillan Magazines Ltd.). The constant rearrangement of continents by plate tectonics influences the long-term evolution of the atmosphere by transferring carbon dioxide to and from large continental carbonate stores. There are two potential mechanisms that might cause this relationship. Pollen data from lakes and bogs as well as loess profiles provided important land-based correlation data. They show no understanding of the processes of snow and ice melt - the energy inputs (other than solar radiation input) and melt water removal. There is a gradual increase in species richness following the increase in food supply from the equator northward. They argue against a straw man: that mainstream climate science thinks that CO2 is supposed to force the glacial/interglacial cycles. And now the people profiting who did not do that 'harder to do' investigation of the potential harm get to 'legally' demand that 'others have to do the harder work of conclusively proving the harm done (like the tobacco people still claim that the exact biological mechanisms of harm caused by smoking are not conclusively proven'. Massive deposits of tillites and anomalous isotopic signatures are found, which gave rise to the Snowball Earth hypothesis. A concept foreign to Ellis and Palmer in their "one true factor" mindset. Figure 7. And given this requirement the apparent silence by Ellis & Palmer (2016) on the matter is entirely wrong. For example, during the Medieval Warm Period, the American Midwest was in drought, including the Sand Hills of Nebraska which were active sand dunes. Almost 90% of this variation can be explained by five variables, representing seasonal temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and elevation [18]. Thinking of buying an EV? An influence of life has to be taken into account rather soon in the history of the atmosphere because hints of early life forms have been dated to as early as 3.5 billion years ago. g1. [34][35][36] The weathering sequesters CO2, by the reaction of minerals with chemicals (especially silicate weathering with CO2) and thereby removing CO2 from the atmosphere and reducing the radiative forcing. P.J.D. (Adapted from Journal of Biogeography, Blackwell Science Ltd). It has been observed that ice ages deepen by progressive steps, but the recovery to interglacial conditions occurs in one big step. It does discuss plant response vs. altitude, and plant response at low CO2 levels, but nearly all the discussion focuses on units of ppm. The mechanism that Ellis and Palmer argue for their low CO2=low vegetation (cover, not height), is rather convoluted and you need to read their paper to see what they say. But it is easy to see why this paper is attractive to those that wish to imply that CO2 has no radiative effect. Such radiative forcing is quantified based on the CO2 amount in the tropopause, in units of watts per square meter to the Earth's surface. The Earth is currently in such an interglacial period of the Quaternary glaciation, with the last glacial period of the Quaternary having ended approximately 11,700 years ago. The thick black curve is an average. The explanations are not mutually exclusive. Condensed, the claim is "low CO2 = higher temperature". So many important factors are ignored or dismissed with a wave of the hands. [1] Old Style (O.S.) The climate system also radiates energy to outer space. The few latitudinal gradient studies on macrophytes diversity are not specific to shallow lakes; they refer to freshwaters in general and often show contrasting results and unclear or no latitudinal pattern. Specifically, the larger area of the tropics allows its species to have larger ranges than do their extratropical counterparts. We also have multiple areas of ice accumulation each with its own patterns of precipitation sources. For example, alterations to ocean processes such as thermohaline circulation play a key role in redistributing heat in the world's oceans. Regardless, the remarkable generality and strength of climate-diversity correlations across biogeographical space, together with their correspondence with patterns over geological time, has caused them to occupy a central role in approaches to examining and predicting the impacts of climate change on mammals and other animals. CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas - Climate Change. Login via the left margin or if you're new, register here. Quantification of climatological variation of precipitation in prior centuries and epochs is less complete but approximated using proxies such as marine sediments, ice cores, cave stalagmites, and tree rings. How do they get these numbers? [49] Greenhouse gases, such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, heat the climate system by trapping infrared light. [85][86], Evidence exists that the Chicxulub asteroid impact some 66 million years ago had severely affected the Earth's climate. This is of particular concern in the early 21st century with growing concern of an impending 6th mass extinction (Kolbert, 2015). The solar cycle, also known as the solar magnetic activity cycle, sunspot cycle, or Schwabe cycle, is a nearly periodic 11-year change in the Sun's activity measured in terms of variations in the number of observed sunspots on the Sun's surface.Over the period of a solar cycle, levels of solar radiation and ejection of solar material, the number and size of sunspots, solar flares, and The PaleoceneEocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a time period with more than 58C global average temperature rise across the event. Some parts of the climate system, such as the oceans and ice caps, respond more slowly in reaction to climate forcings, while others respond more quickly. Although regional and continental studies seemed to be inconclusive, a global analysis of the numbers and distribution of vascular macrophytes in freshwaters (not discriminating shallow lakes) showed that their diversity is highest in the tropics (Afrotropics, Neotropics and Orient) and lowest in the Nearctic, Palaeoarctic and Australasia (Chambers et al., 2008), suggesting a marked divergence between alpha and gamma diversity. One of the most used is the Kppen climate classification scheme first developed in 1899.. Resolution and confidence in the data decrease over time. [99] Remains of beetles are common in freshwater and land sediments. Which gases play an important role in climate change? Variability in temperature, precipitation and hydrology can strongly determine the evolution of a glacier in a particular season. When climate science speaks "albedo feedback", it is this large scale issue that they mean, not Ellis and Palmer's local microclimate one. Carbon dioxide in the rock is then released into the atmosphere. For instance, we are now in a period of anthropogenic global warming. Bee's even offer an example. By far, most research has considered only taxonomic biodiversity, generally species richness. Plant distributions vary under different climate conditions. Murray M. Humphries, in Climate Change, 2009. There has been a cycle of ice ages for the past 2.22.1 million years (starting before the Quaternary in the late Neogene Period). The difference in global mean temperatures between a fully glacial Earth and an ice free Earth is estimated at 10C, though far larger changes would be observed at high latitudes and smaller ones at low latitudes. Regardless of the suitability of the Ellis and Palmer estimates of snow/ice albedo under dusty conditions, they exhibit an abject failure to work those values into any sort of climate or glacial dynamics model. The primary sources include written records such as sagas, chronicles, maps and local history literature as well as pictorial representations such as paintings, drawings and even rock art.