The position of the current warm period in the context of the past 22,000Â years of summer climate in China

Identifying the position of the Current Warm Period (CWP) in the context of the long-term climatic trend is vital for understanding the impact of human activity on climate change. Reconstructions of summer temperature and precipitation in eight subregions of China over the past 22,000 years show tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Shi, Feng, Lu, Huayu, Guo, Zhengtang, Yin, Qiuzhen, Wu, Haibin, Xu, Chenxi, Zhang, Enlou, Shi, Jiangfeng, Cheng, Jun, Xiao, Xiayun, Zhao, Cheng
Other Authors: UCL - SST/ELI/ELIC - Earth & Climate
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2021
Subjects:
General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Geophysics
Ice Sheet
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/255555
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020gl091940
Description
Summary:Identifying the position of the Current Warm Period (CWP) in the context of the long-term climatic trend is vital for understanding the impact of human activity on climate change. Reconstructions of summer temperature and precipitation in eight subregions of China over the past 22,000 years show that the CWP summer temperature and precipitation in these subregions are all lower than in the Early to Middle Holocene. The timing of the Holocene temperature and precipitation peaks in northern China (including Northwest China, North China, and Northeast China) is mainly determined by orbital forcing. Greenhouse gas forcing and the land ice-sheet help to fine-tune the timing of the climate maxima. These findings show that the climate since the Last Glacial Maximum in northern China is more sensitive to nonanthropogenic external forcings, whereas the summer precipitation in Southwest China since the early 20th century is controlled more by anthropogenically forced changes.

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