1998 Was Warmest Year Of Millenium, Climate Researchers Report

"Temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century were unprecedented,"said Bradley.

The study involved a close examination of natural archives, such as tree rings and ice cores, which record climate variations each year. These natural archives are called "proxy indicators" by scientists and allow researchers to consider the short instrumental record of climate in a longer-term perspective. Using proxy information gathered by scientists around the world during the past few decades, the team used sophisticated computer analysis and statistics to reconstruct yearly temperatures and their statistical uncertainties, going back to the year AD 1000.

Specifically, they relied on three sets of 1,000-year-long tree-ring records from North America, plus tree rings from northern Scandinavia, northern Russia, Tasmania, Argentina, Morocco, and France. Additionally, they studied ice cores from Greenland and the Andes mountains.

"As you go back farther in time, the data become sketchier. One can't quite pin things down as well," noted Mann, "but, our results do reveal that significant changes have occurred, and temperatures in the latter 20th century have been exceptionally warm compared to the preceding 900 years. Though substantial uncertainties exist in the estimates, these are nonetheless startling revelations."

Research published by the same team last year reconstructed yearly global surface temperature patterns going back 600 years. That study and the current report both relied on natural archives, and determined that human-induced greenhouse gases were a major factor in 20th century global warming.

The year 1998 was found to be the warmest year on record in separate reports released by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The reports were issued in January 1999, reviewing climatic conditions for the previous year, but the studies examined records only going back 120 years. The new study puts the conclusions from NASA and NOAA in a much longer perspective.

According to the researchers, the 1,000-year reconstruction reveals that temperatures dropped an average of 0.02 degrees Celsius per century prior to the 20th century. This trend is consistent with the "astronomical theory" of climate change, which considers the effects of long-term changes in the nature of the Earth's orbit relative to the Sun, which influence the distribution of solar energy at the Earth's surface over many millennia.

"If temperatures change slowly, society and the environment have time to adjust," said Mann. "The slow, moderate, long-term cooling trend that we found makes the abrupt warming of the late 20th century even more dramatic. The cooling trend of over 900 years was dramatically reversed in less than a century. The abruptness of the recent warming is key, and it is a potential cause for concern."

The latest reconstruction supports earlier theories that temperatures in medieval times were relatively warm, but "even the warmer intervals in the reconstruction pale in comparison with mid-to-late 20th-century temperatures," said Hughes.

Editor's Note: An on-line press kit, including photos of the researchers, graphics, and a link to the report, is available at: http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/press/99/0303climate.html.