Study Finds World Warmth Edging to Ancient Levels

Krishna Dagli writes to mention a decades-long study by NASA scientists. According to the research, global temperatures are reaching highs not seen in thousands of years. From the article: "One of the findings from this collaboration is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene. The Holocene is the relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature change there is indicative of global temperature change. Therefore, by inference, the world as a whole is now as warm as, or warmer than, at any time in the Holocene. According to Lea, 'The Western Pacific is important for another reason, too: it is a major source of heat for the world's oceans and for the global atmosphere.'"

Comments

Re:Historical Data Readings

[Smidge204]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of _the_past_1000_years#General_techniques

It probably took you longer to post that question than it took me to find that answer.
=Smidge=

Re:Historical Data Readings

[dalerb]

FTFA:

Reference
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, R. Ruedy, K. Lo, D.W. Lea, and M. Medina-Elizade 2006. Global temperature change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 103, 14288-14293, doi:10.1073/pnas.0606291103.

These are scientists from NASA and the University of California at Santa Barbara. It doesn't look like they were funded by Exxon or Greenpeace. If you've got the climatological cojones to criticize their findings, please do so. But don't whine and denigrate the report as "quote-scientific-unquote" just because some groups do choose to politicize the study of climate change.