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Older Peron warm and wet, global sea levels were 2.5 to 4 meters (8 to 13 feet) higher than the twentieth-century average 3900: 5.9 kiloyear event dry and cold. 3500: End of the African humid period, Neolithic Subpluvial in North Africa, expands Sahara Desert 3000 – 0: Neopluvial in North America 3,200–2,900: Piora Oscillation, cold
By far the best observed period is from 1850 to the present day, with coverage improving over time. Over this period the recent instrumental record, mainly based on direct thermometer readings, has approximately global coverage. It shows a general warming in global temperatures. Before this time various proxies must be used.
Publicity has surrounded claims of a global warming hiatus during the period 1998–2013. The exceptionally warm El Niño year of 1998 was an outlier from the continuing temperature trend, and so subsequent annual temperatures gave the appearance of a hiatus: by January 2006, it appeared to some that global warming had stopped or paused. [2]
It has also been known by many other names, such as Altithermal, Climatic Optimum, Holocene Megathermal, Holocene Optimum, Holocene Thermal Maximum, Holocene global thermal maximum, Hypsithermal, and Mid-Holocene Warm Period. The warm period was followed by a gradual decline, of about 0.1 to 0.3 °C per millennium, until about two centuries ago.
Changes occurring around the last ice age (in technical terms, the last glacial period) show that the circulation in the North Atlantic can change suddenly and substantially, leading to global climate changes, even though the total amount of energy coming into the climate system did not change much.
The Holocene Climatic Optimum (HCO) was a period of warming throughout the globe but was not globally synchronous and uniform. [45] Following the HCO, the global climate entered a broad trend of very gradual cooling known as Neoglaciation, which lasted from the end of the HCO to before the Industrial Revolution. [43]
One of the hotter periods was the Last Interglacial, around 125,000 years ago, where temperatures were between 0.5 °C and 1.5 °C warmer than before the start of global warming. [40] This period saw sea levels 5 to 10 metres higher than today. The most recent glacial maximum 20,000 years ago was some 5–7 °C colder. This period has sea ...
An interglacial period (or alternatively interglacial, interglaciation) is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene interglacial began at the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,700 years ago.