Researchers have linked warming to the spread of forests in the past 10,000 years

A study of climate change during the Holocene era, which began approximately 10 thousand years BC,

is built on the basis of indirect signs (proxy),such as ice cores, tree rings and fossil pollen traces. Most of these signs indicate that from 9 to 6 thousand years ago there was an increase in temperature on Earth, after which there was a cooling that lasted until the beginning of the industrial era.

According to American researchers in theirIn a paper published in the journal Science Advances, most existing climate simulations could not explain these changes. Traditional factors showed that a gradual warming should have been observed throughout the Holocene.

Scientists use climate modelCommunity Earth System Model (CESM), however, in addition to traditional factors such as the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the size of the ice sheet, they added information about changes in the plant world. The simulation result matched the climate proxies. As the authors of the work note, the increase in temperature after the end of the last ice age led to the spread of vegetation, which in turn further accelerated warming.

"Vegetation distribution during the Holocenewarmed the globe by as much as 1.5°F, says Alexander Thompson, one of the authors of the study. “Our new simulations are closely related to the paleoclimate proxy. It's amazing that we can point to northern hemisphere vegetation as one potential factor in solving the Holocene temperature mystery."

Fossil pollen analysis, according toresearchers, indicates that at the beginning of the Holocene, the plant world in the northern hemisphere experienced a significant rise. The Sahara desert, for example, was greener than it is today and more like a pasture. Coniferous and deciduous forests were widespread in the middle latitudes and the Arctic.

“Overall, our research shows that accountingvegetation changes are critical,” Thompson adds. “Predictions of future climate change will be more reliable if they include changes in vegetation.”

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