How cold was the ice age? Researchers now know
Scientists' ice age 'hindcast' may shed light on future climate

Date:
August 26, 2020
Source:
University of Arizona
Summary:
Scientists have nailed down the temperature of the last ice age --
the Last Glacial Maximum of 20,000 years ago - to about 46 degrees
Fahrenheit.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A University of Arizona-led team has nailed down the temperature of
the last ice age -- the Last Glacial Maximum of 20,000 years ago --
to about 46 degrees Fahrenheit.


========================================================================== Their findings allow climate scientists to better understand the
relationship between today's rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide
-- a major greenhouse gas -- and average global temperature.

The Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM, was a frigid period when huge glaciers covered about half of North America, Europe and South America and
many parts of Asia, while flora and fauna that were adapted to the
cold thrived.

"We have a lot of data about this time period because it has been studied
for so long," said Jessica Tierney, associate professor in the UArizona Department of Geosciences. "But one question science has long wanted
answers to is simple: How cold was the ice age?" Tracking Temperature
Tierney is lead author of a paper published today in Nature that found
that the average global temperature of the ice age was 6 degrees Celsius
(11 F) cooler than today. For context, the average global temperature
of the 20th century was 14 C (57 F).



==========================================================================
"In your own personal experience that might not sound like a big
difference, but, in fact, it's a huge change," Tierney said.

She and her team also created maps to illustrate how temperature
differences varied in specific regions across the globe.

"In North America and Europe, the most northern parts were covered
in ice and were extremely cold. Even here in Arizona, there was big
cooling," Tierney said. "But the biggest cooling was in high latitudes,
such as the Arctic, where it was about 14 C (25 F) colder than today."
Their findings fit with scientific understanding of how Earth's poles
react to temperature changes.

"Climate models predict that the high latitudes will get warmer
faster than low latitudes," Tierney said. "When you look at future
projections, it gets really warm over the Arctic. That's referred to
as polar amplification. Similarly, during the LGM, we find the reverse
pattern. Higher latitudes are just more sensitive to climate change and
will remain so going forward." Counting Carbon


========================================================================== Knowing the temperature of the ice age matters because it is used to
calculate climate sensitivity, meaning how much the global temperature
shifts in response to atmospheric carbon.

Tierney and her team determined that for every doubling of atmospheric
carbon, global temperature should increase by 3.4 C (6.1 F), which is
in the middle of the range predicted by the latest generation of climate
models (1.8 to 5.6 C).

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the ice age were about 180
parts per million, which is very low. Before the Industrial Revolution,
levels rose to about 280 parts per million, and today they've reached
415 parts per million.

"The Paris Agreement wanted to keep global warming to no larger than
2.7 F (1.5 C) over pre-industrial levels, but with carbon dioxide levels increasing the way they are, it would be extremely difficult to avoid more
than 3.6 F (2 C) of warming," Tierney said. "We already have about 2 F
(1.1 C) under our belt, but the less warm we get the better, because
the Earth system really does respond to changes in carbon dioxide."
Making a Model Since there were no thermometers in the ice age, Tierney
and her team developed models to translate data collected from ocean
plankton fossils into sea-surface temperatures. They then combined the
fossil data with climate model simulations of the LGM using a technique
called data assimilation, which is used in weather forecasting.

"What happens in a weather office is they measure the temperature,
pressure, humidity and use these measurements to update a forecasting
model and predict the weather," Tierney said. "Here, we use the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research climate model
to produce a hindcast of the LGM, and then we update this hindcast with
the actual data to predict what the climate was like." In the future,
Tierney and her team plan to use the same technique to recreate warm
periods in Earth's past.

"If we can reconstruct past warm climates," she said, "then we can start
to answer important questions about how the Earth reacts to really
high carbon dioxide levels, and improve our understanding of what
future climate change might hold." The research was supported by the Heisings-Simons Foundation and the National Science Foundation.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Arizona. Original
written by Mikayla Mace.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Jessica E. Tierney, Jiang Zhu, Jonathan King, Steven B. Malevich,
Gregory
J. Hakim, Christopher J. Poulsen. Glacial cooling and climate
sensitivity revisited. Nature, 2020; 584 (7822): 569 DOI:
10.1038/s41586-020-2617-x ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200826141405.htm

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