Humans sparked warming nearly 200 years ago

(Eco Business, 31 Aug 2016) Human activity prompted an early start to global warming, scientists say – nearly 200 years ago, long before previous studies had suggested.

Global warming may have started far earlier than anyone has so far imagined. The first signs of climate change driven by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide may have been there in the year the world’s first intercity railway link opened between Manchester and Liverpool, when the Duke of Wellington was still Prime Minister of Britain, when an angry Parisian mob overturned the French monarchy in 1830.

But if so – and climate scientists and modellers will argue whether in fact humans sparked warming so early – the evidence is available only with benefit of a long time series and twenty-twenty hindsight.

Nerilie Abram , climate scientist at the Australian National University, and international colleagues in the Past Global Changes consortium known as PAGES report in the journal Nature that they looked once again at all the climate data – records and proxy evidence from ice cores and ocean sediments – since 1500 AD.

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Eco Business, 31 Aug 2016: Humans sparked warming nearly 200 years ago