In the News: Long-term Global Climate Change Study

Today, researchers released a study of long-term global climate temperatures for the last 11,300 years.  According to the article abstract,

Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios.

References

Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, & Alan C. Mix, A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years, Science 8 March 2013: 1198-1201.[DOI:10.1126/science.1228026] 
 

New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/science/earth/global-temperatures-highest-in-4000-years-study-says.html?_r=0
 
National Science Foundation Article,
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?org=NSF&cntn_id=127133&preview=false