Commentary on "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago"
Bill Ruddiman (Climatic Change, 61, 261-293, 2003) recently suggested that early civilisations could have saved us from an ice age because land management over substantial areas caused an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Ruddiman suggests a decreasing "natural course" of the Holo...
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ftunistlouisbrus:oai:dial.uclouvain.be:boreal:39377 2024-05-12T08:05:22+00:00 Commentary on "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" Crucifix, Michel Loutre, Marie-France Berger, André UCL - SC/PHYS - Département de physique 2005 http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/39377 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-005-7278-0 eng eng Springer boreal:39377 http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/39377 doi:10.1007/s10584-005-7278-0 urn:ISSN:0165-0009 urn:EISSN:1573-1480 info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess Climatic Change : an interdisciplinary, international journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change, Vol. 69, no. 2-3, p. 419-426 (2005) info:eu-repo/semantics/article 2005 ftunistlouisbrus https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-005-7278-0 2024-04-18T18:15:11Z Bill Ruddiman (Climatic Change, 61, 261-293, 2003) recently suggested that early civilisations could have saved us from an ice age because land management over substantial areas caused an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Ruddiman suggests a decreasing "natural course" of the Holocene greenhouse gases concentrations and sea-level by referring to analogous situations in the past, namely the last three interglacials. An examination of marine isotopic stage 11 would perhaps make Ruddiman's argument even more thought-challenging. Yet, the hypothesis of a natural lowering of CO2 during the Holocene contradicts recent numerical simulations of the Earth carbon cycle during this period. We think that the only way to resolve this conflict is to properly assimilate the palaeoclimate information in numerical climate models. As a general rule, models are insufficiently tested with respect to the wide range of climate situations that succeeded during the Pleistocene. In this comment, we present three definitions of palaeoclimate information assimilation with relevant examples. We also present original results with the Louvain-la-Neuve climate-ice sheet model suggesting that if, indeed, the Holocene atmospheric CO2 increase is anthropogenic, a late Holocene glacial inception is plausible, but not certain, depending on the exact time evolution of the atmospheric CO2 concentration during this period. Article in Journal/Newspaper Ice Sheet DIAL@USL-B (Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles) Climatic Change 69 2-3 13 426 |
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DIAL@USL-B (Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles) |
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English |
description |
Bill Ruddiman (Climatic Change, 61, 261-293, 2003) recently suggested that early civilisations could have saved us from an ice age because land management over substantial areas caused an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Ruddiman suggests a decreasing "natural course" of the Holocene greenhouse gases concentrations and sea-level by referring to analogous situations in the past, namely the last three interglacials. An examination of marine isotopic stage 11 would perhaps make Ruddiman's argument even more thought-challenging. Yet, the hypothesis of a natural lowering of CO2 during the Holocene contradicts recent numerical simulations of the Earth carbon cycle during this period. We think that the only way to resolve this conflict is to properly assimilate the palaeoclimate information in numerical climate models. As a general rule, models are insufficiently tested with respect to the wide range of climate situations that succeeded during the Pleistocene. In this comment, we present three definitions of palaeoclimate information assimilation with relevant examples. We also present original results with the Louvain-la-Neuve climate-ice sheet model suggesting that if, indeed, the Holocene atmospheric CO2 increase is anthropogenic, a late Holocene glacial inception is plausible, but not certain, depending on the exact time evolution of the atmospheric CO2 concentration during this period. |
author2 |
UCL - SC/PHYS - Département de physique |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Crucifix, Michel Loutre, Marie-France Berger, André |
spellingShingle |
Crucifix, Michel Loutre, Marie-France Berger, André Commentary on "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" |
author_facet |
Crucifix, Michel Loutre, Marie-France Berger, André |
author_sort |
Crucifix, Michel |
title |
Commentary on "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" |
title_short |
Commentary on "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" |
title_full |
Commentary on "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" |
title_fullStr |
Commentary on "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" |
title_full_unstemmed |
Commentary on "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" |
title_sort |
commentary on "the anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" |
publisher |
Springer |
publishDate |
2005 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/39377 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-005-7278-0 |
genre |
Ice Sheet |
genre_facet |
Ice Sheet |
op_source |
Climatic Change : an interdisciplinary, international journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change, Vol. 69, no. 2-3, p. 419-426 (2005) |
op_relation |
boreal:39377 http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/39377 doi:10.1007/s10584-005-7278-0 urn:ISSN:0165-0009 urn:EISSN:1573-1480 |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-005-7278-0 |
container_title |
Climatic Change |
container_volume |
69 |
container_issue |
2-3 |
container_start_page |
13 |
op_container_end_page |
426 |
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1798847662437433344 |