Quote:Isotope data from the GISP2 Greenland ice core suggests that Greenland was more than~10°C colder during the Younger Dryas and that the sudden warming of 10° ±4°C that ended the Younger Dryas occurred in only about 40 to 50. years.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/19/the-intriguing-problem-of-the-younger-drya...It seems that namnugenot got his information from WUWT and an article from Easterbrook.
I'm guessing this is the source of his information.
Quote:Cuffey, K.M., and G.D. Clow, "Temperature, accumulation, and ice sheet elevation in central Greenland throughout the last deglacial transition", Journal of Geophysical Research, 102, 383-396, 1997.
Or from here.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.htmlWell let's hear Dr. Richard Alley has to say about the GISP2 data.
Quote:First off, no single temperature record from anywhere can prove or disprove global warming, because the temperature is a local record, and one site is not the whole world. One of the lessons drawn from comparing Greenland to Antarctica and many other places is that some of the temperature changes (the ice-age cycling) are very widespread and shared among most records, but other of the temperature changes (sometimes called millennial, or abrupt, or Younger-Dryas-type) are antiphased between Greenland and the south, and still other temperature changes may be unrelated between different places (one anomalously cold year in Greenland does not tell you the temperature anomaly in Australia or Peru).
Quote:So, using GISP2 data to argue against global warming is, well, stupid, or misguided, or misled, or something, but surely not scientifically sensible. And, using GISP2 data within the larger picture of climate science demonstrates that our scientific understanding is good, supports our expectation of global warming, but raises the small-chance-of-big-problem issue that in turn influences the discussion of optimal human response.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/richard-alley-on-old-ice-climate-an...The scary part is that we have had abrupt climate change in the past and there are no guarantees us mucking around with the thermostat won't set off another one.