1:600-1:999 Scale

The temperature record of the past 1000 years describes the reconstruction of temperature for the last 1000 years on the Northern Hemisphere. A reconstruction is needed because a reliable surface temperature record exists only since about 1850. more...

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Studying past climate is of interest for scientists in order to improve the understanding of current climate variability and, relatedly, providing a better basis for future climate projections. In particular, if the nature and magnitude of natural climate variability can be established, scientists will be better positioned to identify and quantify human generated climate variability (commonly referred to as 'anthropogenic global warming' (AGW)). Although temperature reconstructions from proxy data help us understand the character of natural climate variability, attribution of recent climate change relies on a broad range of methodologies in addition to the proxy reconstructions .

According to all major temperature reconstructions published in peer-reviewed journals (see graph), the increase in temperature in the 20th century and the temperature in the late 20th century is the highest in the record. Attention has tended to focus on the early work of Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998), whose "hockey stick" graph was featured in the 2001 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The methodology and data sets used in creating the Mann et al. (1998) version of the hockey stick graph are disputed, most notably by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.

For general information about temperature records see the main article: Temperature record. For information on the description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in various reports see the main article: MWP and LIA in IPCC reports

General techniques

By far the best observed period is from 1850 to the present day. Over this period the recent instrumental records, mainly based on direct thermometer readings, has approximately global coverage. It shows a general warming in global temperatures.

Quantitative methods using proxy data

As there are few instrumental records before 1850 temperatures before then must be reconstructed based on proxy methods. One such method, based on principles of dendrochronology, uses the width and other characteristics of tree rings to infer temperature. The isotopic composition of snow, corals, and stalactites can also be used to infer temperature. Other techniques which have been used include examining records of the time of crop harvests, the treeline in various locations, and other historical records to make inferences about the temperature. These proxy reconstructions are indirect inferences of temperature and thus tend to have greater uncertainty than instrumental data.

In general, the recent history of the proxy records is calibrated against local temperature records to estimate the relationship between temperature and the proxy. The longer history of the proxy is then used to reconstruct temperature from earlier periods. Proxy records must be averaged in some fashion if a global or hemispheric record is desired. Considerable care must be taken in the averaging process; for example, if a certain region has a large number of tree ring records, a simple average of all the data would strongly over-weight that regions. Hence data-reduction techniques such as principal components analysis are used to combine some of these regional records before they are globally combined.

Read more at Wikipedia.org