Northern South China Sea SST changes over the last two millennia and possible linkage with solar irradiance

by Deming Kong et al., November 30, 2017 in Quaternary International


High-resolution surface temperature records over the last two millennia are crucial to understanding the forcing and response mechanism of Earth’s climate. Here we report a bidecadal-resolution sea surface temperature (SST) record based on long-chain alkenones in a gravity sediment core retrieved from the northern South China Sea. SST values varied between 26.7 and 27.5 °C, with a total variability ∼1 °C over the last 2000 years.

Carbon Budgets

by Clive Best, October 3, 2017


It started as a nice simple idea: There is a finite amount of Carbon that humanity can burn before the planet warms above 2C. This idea was based on  AR5  Earth Systems Models (ESMs) ‘showing’ that the relationship between global temperatures and cumulative emissions was linear. At last the IPCC had something easy for world leaders to understand! This was all nicely  summarised in Figure SPM-10, shown below. The Paris accord is essentially derived from this one figure.

The problem though is that it wasn’t really true.

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