Earth is the warmest since last ice age

Nature : Using data collected from sediment cores drilled in lake bottoms and sea floors around the globe and from ice cores drilled in Antarctica and Greenland, climate scientists have reconstructed Earth’s climate back to the end of the last ice age some 11 300 years ago. According to the study conducted by Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University and colleagues, global temperatures are rising faster now than ever before, and Earth is warmer today than it has been for most of the Holocene epoch, which spans the entire period of human civilization. Whereas many previous temperature reconstructions were regional in nature, the current study combined data from sites all over the world. The researchers point out that until the last century and a half, temperature trends appear to be the result of natural factors such as Earth’s orbital position relative to the Sun; since the Industrial Revolution, however, increased emissions of human-generated greenhouse gases help to explain why global temperatures have risen so quickly in recent decades.