- Author: Carole Hom
Remember Harry Potter's new improved broom, the Nimbus 2000? The one with the curvy bits where an ordinary household broom is straight? Imagine that handle grafted onto a hockey stick.
What does that have to do with climate change? A recent analysis published in the journal Science examined reconstructions of climate data back 11,000 years. The resulting graph of temperature anomalies through time looks sort of like Harry Potter's broom merged with the hockey stick. Sort of.
What this means: although some past climates may have been warmer than the current one, the today's speed of change has no precedent. That is, our climate has warmed faster in the past 100 years than previous climates over a 4,000 year period.
You can read descriptions of the article in The Atlantic blog, the New Scientist, CNN.com ("Epic" global warming) or the original paper in Science online.