Global Climate Variations Over the Past 250 Years: Relationships with the Middle East

We analyze recent global temperature reconstructions over several centuries in time based on calibrations of tempera-ture patterns against global networks of long instrumental and “proxy ” data (natural archives such as ice cores, corals, and tree rings), focusing on long-term climatic variations in...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.508.6500
http://environment.research.yale.edu/documents/downloads/0-9/103mann.pdf
Description
Summary:We analyze recent global temperature reconstructions over several centuries in time based on calibrations of tempera-ture patterns against global networks of long instrumental and “proxy ” data (natural archives such as ice cores, corals, and tree rings), focusing on long-term climatic variations in the Middle East. The pattern of global warming of the past century does not show a strong influence in this region. Instead, patterns of natural low-frequency variability appear to dominate the region. One of these patterns is associated with the well-known “North Atlantic Oscillation ” and leads to changes on interannual and decadal timescales. Another distinct pattern appears to relate to influences of low-frequency variability in the North Atlantic ocean circulation and overlying atmosphere circulation, and describes changes that are predominantly multidecadal in timescale. This latter pattern is especially important in predicting possible climate change scenarios in future decades in this region.