RE: Good source of climate change data
May 11, 2011 at 3:30 am
(This post was last modified: May 11, 2011 at 4:07 am by Anomalocaris.)
Milankovitch doesn't speak directly to human induced warming. It speaks to a pattern in the orbital dynamics of the earth that has been closely echoed by a pattern in the climate of the planet in the last million years. The correlation is strong. The causation is not completely worked out, but it seems enough has been worked out to form basis of predictive models
The different milankovitch predictive models seem to converge on the prediction that factors which had governed climate for the last million years should be driving global temperature in a lengthy downward trend starting in early Holocene, and that the trend will continue for tens of thousands more years. See J Imbrie, J Z Imbrie (1980). "Modeling the Climatic Response to Orbital Variations". Science 207 (1980/02/29): 943–953. And Berger A, Loutre MF (2002). "Climate: An exceptionally long interglacial ahead?". Science 297 (5585): 1287–8.
This is not what we observe. The closeness of the match between Milankovitch cycle and climate cycle over the bulk of last million years is such that deviation as we observe for the Holocene requires special explanation. One plausible explanation is anthropogenic GHG emission.
The different milankovitch predictive models seem to converge on the prediction that factors which had governed climate for the last million years should be driving global temperature in a lengthy downward trend starting in early Holocene, and that the trend will continue for tens of thousands more years. See J Imbrie, J Z Imbrie (1980). "Modeling the Climatic Response to Orbital Variations". Science 207 (1980/02/29): 943–953. And Berger A, Loutre MF (2002). "Climate: An exceptionally long interglacial ahead?". Science 297 (5585): 1287–8.
This is not what we observe. The closeness of the match between Milankovitch cycle and climate cycle over the bulk of last million years is such that deviation as we observe for the Holocene requires special explanation. One plausible explanation is anthropogenic GHG emission.
