A new study suggests that the Pacific ocean near Peru was two degrees warmer 10,000 years ago.[1]
The current rate of warming (as estimated by ARGO buoys in the last ten years) is 0.005C per year. So we are only 400 years away from achieving the same kind of warming the Mesopotamian Farmers did.
Of course this could be just a localized warm patch, except that an earlier study showed that waters draining out of the Pacific to the Indian Ocean were also much hotter during the same era.[2]
The present time is on the left. Graph A shows temperature proxy from Antarctic ice cores, graph B shows 0-150m depth ocean temperature in black
AbstractTemperature reconstructions from a shallow core (375 m) from the Peru Margin are used to test the influence of Subantarctic Mode Water (SAMW) on the eastern equatorial Pacific (EEP) thermostad and thus the effect of southern high latitude climate on interior ocean heat content (OHC). Temperature estimates, based on Mg/Ca measurements of planktonic and benthic foraminifera (Neogloboquadrina dutertrei and Uvigerina spp ., respectively) show higher temperatures in the early Holocene, a cooling of ∼2°∼2° by 8 kyr B.P. and after [...]
