Earth Hotter Now Than Most of Past 11,000 Years

By GAUTAM NAIK, WSJ

New research suggests that average global temperatures were higher in the last decade than over most of the previous 11,300 years, a finding that offers a long-term context for assessing modern-day climate change.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, aims to give a global overview of Earth's temperatures over the past 11,300 years—a relatively balmy period known as the Holocene that began after the last major ice age ended and encompasses all of recorded human civilization.

The research shows that a one-degree temperature variation that took 11 millennia to occur since the end of the last major ice age has now been replicated in 150 years, since the early days of the Industrial Revolution.

Within that framework, the decade 2000-2009 was one of the warmest since modern record-keeping began, but global mean temperatures didn't breach the levels of the early Holocene. Now they are on track to do so, according to the Science paper. If the scientists' forecasts are right, the planet will be warmer in 2100 than it has been for 11,300 years.

(More here.)