University scientists Arizona reconstructed climate over the past 24 thousand years, since the end of the last glacial era. The results of the study published in the NATURE journal confirm that the main driving forces of climate change are to increase greenhouse gas concentrations and the retreat of iceboards.
Specialists reconstructed climatic changes through intervals of 200 years, combining several data sets, including geological records of temperature in marine sediments and computer modeling results. Temperature changes are reflected on the chemical composition of the shells of long-dead marine animals, paleoclimatologists can use these measurements to estimate the temperature. Simulation allows us to build a complete picture of the climate based on the temperature data.
It turned out that the scale and speed of warming caused by the human activity over the past 150 years is far superior to the scale and speed of change over the last 24 thousand years. Thus, the current climatic shifts are unprecedented.
Earlier it was reported that scientists of the University of California in Riverside found out that climate change negatively affects the nutrition of the bumblebees, the existence of which is associated with the pollination of many cultivated plants, including tomatoes, blueberries, pepper and potatoes.