Did the Earth cool before human intervention in the climate?

We are currently seeing a globalclimate warming. The average temperature on the planet has already increased by more than 1 degree Celsius compared to the pre-industrial period. And this is not the limit - according to scientists, humanity is unlikely to be able to stop this process at even 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the current global warming is anthropogenic, that is, caused by the activities of mankind. However, it is known that the climate on the planet was constantly changing even before the industrial revolution - in the history of the Earth there were both ice ages and periods of strong warming. For example, Greenland two million years ago was a really green island with a rich ecosystem. But what period would it be now if the climate had not been affected by human activities? According to scientists, the Earth should have cooled and approached the ice age, but not everyone agrees with this opinion.

If man had not intervened in the climate, the Earth might have expected an ice age.

How scientists learn about past climates

To answer the question of what should benatural climate now, scientists need to know what was the average temperature on our planet in the past. According to paleoclimatologists who study the climate in antiquity, data for the last 6,000 years are especially important. Therefore, the attention of many researchers is riveted to this time period. But scientists could not come to a consensus, because the data are too contradictory.

How do scientists even know about the climate that wason Earth thousands of years ago? Of course, no thermometers existed several thousand years ago, as well as written archives. Therefore, paleoclimatologists have to study indirect indicators.

For example, one of them is annual rings.trees - the wider they are, the higher the temperature was where they grew. The ice of ancient glaciers also contains climate data. In addition, scientists draw conclusions from tiny shells found in the sediments of the bottom of lakes and oceans, since their chemical composition during life changes depending on temperature.

You can draw conclusions about the temperature from the annual rings of trees

By combining all these indicators, scientists canto draw sufficiently accurate conclusions about the climate in a given period of time. However, there is one “but” that prevents scientists - all of the above indirect indicators, as a rule, are unevenly distributed over the planet and in time. This makes it difficult to reconstruct changes in global temperatures.

Ice age or global warming?

Research done on the basis of indirectindicators show that 6000 years ago there was less ice on the planet than in the 19th century (at the last moment before the industrial revolution that caused the warming of the planet). In addition, the Earth had more vegetation cover. This suggests that the planet was darker, which means it absorbed more heat. But over time, the Earth began to cool, as a result of which the temperature dropped by 0.7 degrees Celsius.

Earth was warmer 6,000 years ago than it was in the 19th century

But climate modeling shows a very differentthe result is that as societies based on agriculture developed over the millennia following the retreat of the ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased. This means that climate warming began long before the industrial period.

How do scientists know about carbon dioxide contentgas in the atmosphere thousands of years ago? Its composition was preserved in the air bubbles of ancient ice. But what was the real situation? Climate models based on atmospheric, biosphere, and hydrosphere data do not appear to be entirely accurate. For example, an experiment with a climate model that included data on vegetation on Earth showed results similar to those obtained by scientists based on proxy indicators.

Be sure to follow this link to subscribe to our YANDEX.ZEN CHANNEL. With it you will be aware of the latest developments in the world of science and high technology.

From this we can conclude that the Earth is stillcooled, which to some extent compensated for human intervention in the climate. However, at the moment the situation with global warming is still much worse than previously thought. Therefore, one cannot count on natural cooling.