Global Warming Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Global Warming, including details on causes, effects, impact, facts, myths, information. | ||||||||
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The twentieth century was the wettest period in northern Pakistan over the past millennium.Treydte KS, Schleser GH, Helle G, Frank DC, Winiger M, Haug GH, Esper J Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, CH- 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland. kerstin.treydte@wsl.ch Twentieth-century warming could lead to increases in the moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere, altering the hydrological cycle and the characteristics of precipitation. Such changes in the global rate and distribution of precipitation may have a greater direct effect on human well-being and ecosystem dynamics than changes in temperature itself. Despite the co-variability of both of these climate variables, attention in long-term climate reconstruction has mainly concentrated on temperature changes. Here we present an annually resolved oxygen isotope record from tree-rings, providing a millennial-scale reconstruction of precipitation variability in the high mountains of northern Pakistan. The climatic signal originates mainly from winter precipitation, and is robust over ecologically different sites. Centennial-scale variations reveal dry conditions at the beginning of the past millennium and through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with precipitation increasing during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries to yield the wettest conditions of the past 1,000 years. Comparison with other long-term precipitation reconstructions indicates a large-scale intensification of the hydrological cycle coincident with the onset of industrialization and global warming, and the unprecedented amplitude argues for a human role. Published 27 April 2006 in Nature, 440(7088): 1179-82.
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