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The Holocene temperature conundrum

  • Zhengyu Liu
  • , Jiang Zhu
  • , Yair Rosenthal
  • , Xu Zhang
  • , Bette L. Otto-Bliesner
  • , Axel Timmermann
  • , Robin S. Smith
  • , Gerrit Lohmann
  • , Weipeng Zheng
  • , Oliver Elison Timm
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Peking University
  • Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick
  • Alfred Wegener Institute - Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
  • National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
  • National Centre for Atmospheric Science
  • CAS - Institute of Atmospheric Physics
  • SUNY Albany

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

457 Scopus citations

Abstract

A recent temperature reconstruction of global annual temperature shows Early Holocene warmth followed by a cooling trend through the Middle to Late Holocene [Marcott SA, et al., 2013, Science 339(6124):1198-1201]. This global cooling is puzzling because it is opposite from the expected and simulated global warming trend due to the retreating ice sheets and rising atmospheric greenhouse gases. Our critical reexamination of this contradiction between the reconstructed cooling and the simulated warming points to potentially significant biases in both the seasonality of the proxy reconstruction and the climate sensitivity of current climate models.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)E3501-E3505
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume111
Issue number34
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 26 2014

Keywords

  • Global temperature
  • Holocene temperature
  • Model-data inconsistency

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