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Revisiting the Holocene global temperature conundrum

Nature volume 614, pages 425–435 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Recent global temperature reconstructions for the current interglacial period (the Holocene, beginning 11,700 years ago) have generated contrasting trends. This Review examines evidence from indicators and drivers of global change, as inferred from proxy records and simulated by climate models, to evaluate whether anthropogenic global warming was preceded by a long-term warming trend or by global cooling. Multimillennial-scale cooling before industrialization requires extra climate forcing and major climate feedbacks that are not well represented in most climate models at present. Conversely, global warming before industrialization challenges proxy-based reconstructions of past climate. The resolution of this conundrum has implications for contextualizing post-industrial warming and for understanding climate sensitivity to several forcings and their attendant feedbacks, including greenhouse gases. From a large variety of available evidence, we find support for a relatively mild millennial-scale global thermal maximum during the mid-Holocene, but more research is needed to firmly resolve the conundrum and to advance our understanding of slow-moving climate variability.

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Fig. 1: GMST anomalies during recent global warming and the mid-Holocene (6 ka) from proxies and models.
Fig. 2: List of climate-system features and metrics discussed in this Review.
Fig. 3: Holocene climate forcings and feedbacks (left) and selected reconstructions and proxy data (right).

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All of the data used for this Review are from published literature, as cited in the text.

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Acknowledgements

We thank our colleagues for their helpful input, including D. Baggenstos, S. Bova, R. Bradley, C. Brierley, R. Creel, S. Dee, M. Erb, H. Fischer, O. Heiri, U. Herzschuh, P. Hopcroft, T. Laepple, D. Lunt, N. McKay, M. Osman and A. Thompson. This Review was motivated by the need for a comprehensive assessment of palaeo GMST for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.

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  1. Ellie Broadman

    Present address: Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

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  1. School of Earth and Sustainability, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Darrell S. Kaufman & Ellie Broadman

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D.S.K. conceived the Review, assembled the datasets and wrote the first manuscript. E.B. expanded and improved the manuscript and crafted the figures.

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Correspondence to Darrell S. Kaufman.

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Kaufman, D.S., Broadman, E. Revisiting the Holocene global temperature conundrum. Nature 614, 425–435 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05536-w

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