Paris (AFP)
Over the past 2,000 years, global temperatures have never risen as fast as now, according to data released Wednesday that experts say should shut the climate savvy.
While much of Europe suffers its second episode of hot weather in one month, two separate studies analyze 2,000 years of trends in the recent climatic history of our planet.
Researchers used temperature data compiled from nearly 700 indicators: tree rings, ice cores, lacustrine sediments and corals, and modern thermometers.
The first study, published in the journal Nature, shows, for example, that during the "Little Ice Age" (from 1300 to 1850), if it has been extraordinarily cold in Europe and the United States for several centuries, it was not cold everywhere on the planet.
"When we go back to the past, we find regional phenomena, but none is global," says Nathan Steiger of Columbia University in New York. "At the moment, global warming is global, 98% of the world warmed up after the industrial revolution," he adds.
A second article in Nature Geoscience examines the average temperature change over short periods of a few decades each.
Their conclusions are clear: at no time since the beginning of our era have temperatures increased as rapidly and as regularly as at the end of the twentieth century. When post-war, production (fueled by fossil fuels) and consumption reached unprecedented levels.
This result "highlights the extraordinary nature of current climate change," explains Raphael Neukom of the University of Bern in Switzerland, co-author of the study.
These studies "should finally stop climate-skeptics who claim that recent global warming is part of a natural climate cycle," said Mark Maslin of University College London, commenting on the work.
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