The film The Day After Tomorrow was about a rapid climate change event that takes place within weeks. Who can forget those dramatic pictures of a frozen New York City - with the entire Northern Hemisphere going into a new ice age?
The idea of rapid climate change was then ridiculed by scientists.
But wait. Now scientists confirm that a rapid climate change event happened after the last ice age. Well, it took much longer than the one in the movie, but geologically speaking 120 years are just a blip.
And who can tell whether next time it will take less than 120 years for climate to go to catastrophic extremes?
With world population growing out of control, any regional change of climate can wreck havoc with crops and water supply. In spite of the lack of technology, human migrations were easier in the past because they proceeded rather slowly and in small numbers. These days they would involve millions of climate refugees.
SCIENCE DAILY - Regional climate changes can be very rapid. A German-British team of geoscientists now reports that such a rapid climate change occurred in different regions with a time difference of 120 years.
Investigation in the west German Eifel region and in southern Norway demonstrated that at the end of the last glaciation about 12,240 years before present climate became warmer, first recognised in the Eifel region and 120 years later in southern Norway. Nonetheless, the warming was equally rapid in both regions.
Within the younger Dryas - the last about 1100-year long cold phase at the end of the last ice age - a rapid warming first was measured in the Eifel region. Sediment cores from the Meerfelder Maar lake depict a typical deposition pattern, which was also found in the sediments of Lake Krakenes in southern Norway, but with a time lag of 120 years.
The task of dating these events.
Researchers used layers of ash spewed by volcanoes at that time as markers to date those changes. Also lake sediments are very accurate climate archives, especially when they contain seasonal bands similar like tree rings.
Read more -
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131204090958.htm
Dear readers, I tried to find more material on abrupt climate change, but almost all the articles refer to global warming. However, global warming is only one way the climate may sway in the future. It could also go the opposite way. After all, there are many variables that can influence the Earth's climate. Some of them are the sun and the stars.
Global warming?
No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists
The Telegraph - September 2013: A leaked report to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seen by the Mail on Sunday, has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century. If correct, it would contradict computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming. The news comes several years after predictions that the arctic would be ice-free by 2013.
A cold Arctic summer has led to a record increase in the ice cap, leading experts to predict a period of global cooling. There has been a 29 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of 533,000 square miles.
In a rebound from 2012's record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin. The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific had remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes. One ship has now managed to pass through, completing its journey on September 27.
EVEN TINY CHANGES IN SOLAR ACTIVY CAN SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACT ON EARTH'S CLIMATE
The Milky Way Galaxy's Spiral Arms and Ice-Age Epochs and the Cosmic Ray Connection
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