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New study on precipitation in last interglacial published

Nov 21, 2019
New climate simulations show a sharp increase in extreme precipitation events during the last warm period 129,000-120,000 years ago. Similar climate changes are forecast for the future. Photo: flickr/Niccolò Ubalducci, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (https://creativecom
New climate simulations show a sharp increase in extreme precipitation events during the last warm period 129,000-120,000 years ago. Similar climate changes are forecast for the future. Photo: flickr/Niccolò Ubalducci, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)

The period from 129 to 120 thousand years ago, during the last interglacial period, may have been the last time the climate was warmer than it is today. However, it has so far been unclear whether climate models are capable of correctly simulating precipitation changes in a warmer climate – a crucial prerequisite for reliable climate predictions. A team of scientists has now compared climate models with precipitation proxies for the last interglacial, showing that climate models can reliably simulate a significant part of the reconstructed precipitation changes. The researchers have now published their results in Science Advances. Significantly involved in the study were also scientists from the MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences.

Original publication: 

Paolo Scussolini, Pepijn Bakker, Chuncheng Guo, Christian Stepanek, Qiong Zhang, Pascale Braconnot, Jian Cao, Maria-Vittoria Guarino, Dim Coumou, Matthias Prange,  Philip J. Ward, Hans Renssen, Masa Kageyama, Bette Otto-Bliesner, Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts: Agreement between reconstructed and modeled boreal precipitation of the Last Interglacial. Science Advances 2019. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax7047

Press release of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam