Abstract
The concensus view (Houghton et al., 1990, 1992) is that the climate of the next century will be warmer than that of the twentieth century. General Circulation Models (GCMs) are becoming increasingly complex and one of the key issues in the whole ‘global warming’ debate is that of detection. When will we be able to say that we are beginning to see the changes in climate system simulated by the GCMs in observational data? Many have tried to say that the rise in global-mean temperatures is due to greenhouse gas build up. Others claim that the rise is natural and would have occurred without the build-up. The issue to many is how much does the climate system vary naturally. Instrumental records only tell us about the present century. Clearly fluctuations and cycles have occurred on longer timescales. We live in an interglacial climate, a warm phase on the 10,000 year timescale, in a period known as the Quaternary, dominated for the most part by Ice Age Climates.
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Jones, P.D., Bradley, R.S., Jouzel, J. (1996). Introduction. In: Jones, P.D., Bradley, R.S., Jouzel, J. (eds) Climatic Variations and Forcing Mechanisms of the Last 2000 Years. NATO ASI Series, vol 41. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-61113-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-61113-1_1
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