关键词:
human impacts
oceans
Interglacial periods
simulating
Climate
climate models
Greenhouse gases
Greenhouse gas emissions
摘要:
We present further steps in our analysis of the early anthropogenic hypothesis (Ruddiman, Clim Change 61:261-293, 2003) that increased levels of greenhouse gases in the current interglacial, compared to lower levels in previous interglacials, were initiated by early agricultural activities, and that these increases caused a warming of climate long before the industrial era (similar to 1750). These steps include updating observations of greenhouse gas and climate trends from earlier interglacials, reviewing recent estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from early agriculture, and describing a simulation by a climate model with a dynamic ocean forced by the low levels of greenhouse gases typical of previous interglacials in order to gauge the magnitude of the climate change for an inferred (natural) low greenhouse gas level relative to a high present day level. We conduct two time slice (equilibrium) simulations using present day orbital forcing and two levels of greenhouse gas forcing: the estimated low (natural) levels of previous interglacials, and the high levels of the present (control). By comparing the former to the latter, we estimate how much colder the climate would be without the combined greenhouse gas forcing of the early agriculture era (inferred from differences between this interglacial and previous interglacials) and the industrial era (the period since similar to 1750). With the low greenhouse gas levels, the global average surface temperature is 2.7 K lower than present day-ranging from similar to 2 K lower in the tropics to 4-8 K lower in polar regions. These changes are large, and larger than those reported in a pre-industrial (similar to 1750) simulation with this model, because the imposed low greenhouse gas levels (CH4 = 450 ppb, CO2 = 240 ppm) are lower than both pre-industrial (CH4 = 760 ppb, CO2 = 280 ppm) and modern control (CH4 = 1,714 ppb, CO2 = 355 ppm) values. The area of year-round snowcover is larger, as found in our previous simulatio